


Just a Prisoner of Your Eyes

by Meztli



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Bisexuality, Chapters with graphic sex scenes will be labeled, F/M, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, M/M, Mourning, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Slice of Life, This was supposed to be a one-shot and it got out of hand, Trauma, mental health
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:33:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22995505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meztli/pseuds/Meztli
Summary: An ex-con and a dissatisfied bartender meet in a small-town bar.Meanwhile, he tries to adjust to a normal life with his estranged younger brother and his seemingly perfect family.
Relationships: Chi-Chi/Son Goku, Raditz/Launch, Tien/Yamcha
Comments: 48
Kudos: 48





	1. Rockin' to the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a Judas Priest song. 
> 
> There'll be some references to the 80s and it's set in the late 90s. 
> 
> Though this isn't written in first person, it is in Raditz's POV, so expect a lot of crude and explicit language.

Smokers idling outside the bar size him up through a filter of cancerous smoke.

They take in his leather, the mess of hair that tumbles down to cover most of his ass, the muscle-bound bulk of his frame. Even without all that, Raditz is pretty sure they’d size up anyone who isn’t a regular at this bar, or this town, and he frankly doesn’t give a shit.

A bouncer almost as big as Raditz stands between him and the belly of the bar. He’s completely bald and carries a dispassionate expression on his face. His forehead is inked with a tattoo of an eye that is so detailed it almost looks like it could blink at him.

Earlier he’d seen the same guy at a greasy diner that Raditz stopped at when he first arrived in this bum-fuck-nowhere town. He’d been having breakfast with another man of a similar build, though that one had been much hairier, and a bit more attractive, in his opinion.

“Sorry, man I don’t have an ID. I just got out of the can.”

The bouncer twitches his mouth disapprovingly and says, “No ID, no entrance.”

“Come on, dude. Do I look like I’m under 21? Besides,” Raditz briefly stretches his head and sweeps the room with a gaze. “Don’t seem like you’ve got many customers, either, and you probably won’t get any more on a Tuesday night. Do an ex-con a favor and let him have a little celebratory drink, huh? Your one gesture of goodwill for the downtrodden.”

All three eyes seem to be staring at him, weighing his words. Then, the bouncer moves off the side and gives him a pass with a curt nod of his head. “If you cause any trouble, not only will I be kicking you out, but I’ll be kicking your ass. Understood?”

Raditz salutes him with a grin and thinks that the bouncer isn’t so bad, after all.

Jesus, the place is a shithole. A stale smell lingers in the air...booze, sweat, and other stuff Raditz doesn’t care to identify. There’s one dated pool table and a dart board placed dangerously right next to it, and the light fixtures look like they haven’t been dusted since the first time the 80s rock ballad currently playing first hit the radio waves, which incidentally was not too long before he got locked up. A few patrons are playing a round of pool, casting him a few suspicious looks as one of them aims poorly at a striped six ball. A few others have their sweaty behinds planted on the stools along the bar. Raditz plops himself on one furthest away from each of them.

There’s one shining beacon of light in this destitute rat’s nest, and she’s in the form of a bitch-faced buxom blonde babe, his favorite kind of woman.

When she spots him, there’s a small tug of lips that clue him in that she likes what she sees, and she sets down the glass she’d been wiping down to take his order.

“What can I get for ya, big guy?” She’s got a husky voice and slight country lilt that he normally finds annoying, but on her it’s sexy.

“Your number, for one.”

She rolls her eyes, snorting out a chuckle. “Smooth. Never heard that one before. You got any more pickup lines under that mane of yours?”

Oh, yeah, he likes this one. “I don’t know, care to search?”

“If you don’t give me your order in the next 10 seconds, I’m moving on to the next customer.”

Raditz looks around the room. “You mean all six customers who already have a drink.”

“Eight… Seven….”

“Goddammit, fine, a double of whiskey, no ice. Whichever one is your cheapest.”

“Figured it was whiskey,” she says, fixing him a drink almost as fast as he can chug it.

He takes it in one gulp, relishing the way it burns his throat. This is no prison booze, that’s for sure. The cheapest shit here would be like ambrosia for the boys back in the cells.

“So, what else do you figure about me?”

She rakes her eyes over him, grinning. “I know trouble when I see it.”

“Well, so do I,” he says, and it’s true. She’s got a scar that runs down the side of her left arm, and permanent scowl that didn’t get there through happy times. “I’ll have another one of these. I’m Raditz, by the way.”

“Launch,” she says, and after she serves his drink, saunters away to attend to a new patron who wanders in already noticeably buzzed.

Even though not many people are ordering and the thin crowd remains relatively the same as night drags on, she keeps herself busy. Cleaning the dishes, polishing the glass, wiping down counters and making sure nobody passes out on them.

He notices that she packs heat, a belt strapped snugly around her voluptuous hips.

He wonders how many of these losers she’s had to reject and warned off with that gun. They ogle her ass and cleavage like vultures starving for their next meal, but none of them openly hit on her beyond a few feeble attempts at flirtation. They’ve probably made the wise choice of giving up on her. She’s way out of their league, anyway.

“What are you doing after your shift?” He asks her when she hands him another order. It’s his third drink and he’s feeling a bit bold and just a little bit horny.

She snorts. “Not you.”

“Ouch,” he says, the delivery of her rejection more amusing to him than it should be.

“Not that you’re not a looker or anything, but I kind of already have my heart set on someone else.” Her gaze moves to a direction right behind him, and when he turns he sees that it’s the baldy with the eye tattoo.

“Him, huh? I don’t think you’ll get very far with that one. He doesn’t play for your team.”

She starts to visibly bristle when she catches on to his meaning. “You can’t just go around judgin’ people like that!”

“You judged me.”

“It ain’t the same.”

“It is if you think I only go for women."

This seems to trip her up.

“I can tell you also are on the flexible side. That guy, though? No, he ain’t budgin’. You’re wasting your time.”

Hard truth or not, he almost regrets saying the guy’s business, as it isn’t his truth to tell, and if she gets baldy to drag him out of the bar, well, it’d be his own damn fault.

She looks like she wants to take a swing at him herself, and it wouldn’t be completely unwarranted.

Instead, she sets down two shot glasses so violently it’s a wonder they don’t shatter on contact, and begins to pour top shelf whiskey on two both of the glasses. One for him, and one for her.

“I can’t afford-”

“Shut up. It’s on the house. Drink up.”

Can’t say no to free booze. The other shit she poured him doesn’t even compare to the what she hands him just now. Finally some good fucking whiskey.

After they both get over the initial burn and let the liquid fire settle in their kidneys, he can’t stop himself from pressing on. “So, you knew?”

She pours herself another one. “Had an inklin’. But just cuz you think he's that don’t mean he actually is.”

“Even though I was right about you.”

“Even though you’re also like me, that don’t mean everyone who swings for both teams has a good sense of what others play for.”

“Evidently not,” he says, referring to her, which she takes notice of with a scowl.

“I’m this close to cuttin’ you off.”

“I’m barely even buzzed.”

“Don’t matter, it’s my call.”

“Is he bothering you?”

Apparently, they’ve raised their voices high enough to where the stoic man who’s the subject of the conversation is on alert and looming over him, muscles tense and ready.

They both wait for Launch to reply as she shifts her green eyes between them. Something seems to click in her brain and she smiles wickedly.

“It’s all good, Tien. We’re just bantering.”

Tien doesn’t budge, crossing his arms tightly with his three eyes glaring. Funny how that freaky tattoo seems to have a life of its own.

“I was just about to leave, anyway,” Raditz says, getting up from his stool. He may be an asshole, but he isn’t in the mood to fight. He’s done enough of that in prison, and that was only to prove or defend himself. Here, though, there isn’t really any point. He doesn’t want to go back to any holding cell, big or small, short-term or long-term.

The blonde holds her hand up haltingly. “No, you stay. You’re coming home with me when I’m done.”

This throws the two men in for a loop. It’s almost comedic how they both look at each other, mouth hung and eyes wide, then back at her.

Launch shrugs her shoulders. “A girl can change her mind, can’t she? I’d be dumb to pass up a body like that up.”

Her words and the way her eyes rake his body up and down send a vibration all throughout his being, heat pooling in his groin. Gods, he wants her, more so now than before. But he’s not sure how to feel about being used like a pawn to get another guy jealous, even though he knows it's not going to work. That’s what she’s trying to do isn’t she? The hesitation lasts for about fifteen seconds. Fuck it. It’s not like he has much dignity left.

Tien still won’t move, eyes almost glowering.

“Ya know I can take care of myself. If I need ya, I’ll call ya.”

Finally, baldy goes back to his post, but not before casting a warning glare at Raditz, which Raditz returns with the smuggest smirk he can muster.

“He’s protective of you, that’s for sure.”

“Shut up about him, or I may change my mind again.”

His bites down on his lip, looking forward to what the night will bring.

With a groan, he releases himself inside her, his potential children blocked by a thin, formidable wall of rubber.

He’s already forgotten his own name until she screams it out for him, digging her claws on his pecs as she rides out the last waves of euphoria in synch with his own.

“Fuck,” he says, giving her one last squeeze of her firm ass right before she collapses onto him, sweaty and hot.

There's no a.c. in her trailer so the air is extra humid and pungent.

“Fuck,” she repeats into his shoulder.

It’s been a while since he’s had a woman, and while he doesn’t have a preference for one or the other, there’s something about this particular person that leaves him feeling like this is the only thing he’s ever needed.

He’s got scratch marks all over him, some of which she licks and it brings him a sensation of painful delight.

“For a tough dude, you sure are sensitive.” She bites him on the nipple, a moan escaping him with that one tug.

In his old life, three times would’ve been enough to have left him satisfied. He may have even been zipping up his pants by now, getting ready to dip out at this point , but right now, the only ambition in his life is to feel her spasm against him one more time.

He half-expects her to kick him out once they eventually tire out, the sky already beginning to lighten into a cobalt blue.

He eyes her as she throws on a fresh pair of panties and flimsy camisole, opening the window and lighting a cig.

She takes a huff and asks, “Would ya like some breakfast?”

What he expects is a decent pair of fried eggs and toast, with shitty coffee to wash it down. What he sees her do in the kitchen signals that she’s about to blow away his expectations.

Before he knows it, she’s whipped up an omelette with all the works, french toast with even the fucking confectioner’s sugar sprinkled over it, and bacon that’s crisped to perfection. The coffee is good, too, tastes just like the beans were freshly picked by an underpaid worker somewhere out in the Andean forest.

“My twin sister taught me all the domestic shit, and cooking’s one of the few things I actually enjoy doing and am good at.”

“Twins, you say? Nice.” He winks at her and takes another bite of bacon. Surprisingly, the morning-after hasn’t been as awkward as it tends to be with strangers you just fucked. After all the passion has subsided, you’re left with a person you barely know even though you know what their asshole looks like because your tongue was all up in there the night before.

“Don’t get any funny ideas. She lives all the way out in a tropical area with her sugar daddy and is nothing like me. We’re like night and day.”

He can tell he’s hit a sore spot, so he let’s it go in favor of a swig of coffee.

“You got any siblings?” She asks, diverting the subject to him.

“Yeah, actually, that’s kind of why I’m out here. I’m staying with my brother until I get back up on my feet. Was hoping to find a gig doing odd jobs or whatever the hell else I can find. Not many people are willing to hire ex-cons.”

Might as well leave that out in the open. She’d find out, eventually, if not by baldy, by someone else. Words travel fast in small towns, though some are better at keeping their secrets than others. His mouth is usually too big to keep any information in, especially concerning himself.

Ironically, it’s his big mouth that helped him reduce his sentence. Yeah, he snitched, but he had damn good reason to.

Launch seems unbothered by this heavy tidbit of his past, and leaves her seat at the table to replace it with his lap. The simple action starts to stir his blood again, and when she starts lifting up his tank he can’t help trailing his hands up her shapely thighs. He leans in to kiss her neck, but she turns away, focused on running her nimble fingers up and down his abdomen.

“I know prison tattoos when I see ‘em, though some of these look like you had ‘em before you got canned.”

She traces the scar on his abdomen where a bullet had once barely missed grazing his vitals, exiting out the back where another scar had formed.

"How long were ya in there?"

"Served ten years out of the eighteen I was supposed to serve. Got paroled for good behavior. Been out for less than a week."

A sensible person would've put space between them at this point, but she remains on his lap. 

"Do I wanna know what you did?"

"I'll tell you about it some time."

Launch is staring into his eyes, as if they'd reveal what his past crimes are. He’s usually not comfortable with eye-contact. In prison, eye-contact could be a matter of life and death. Stare at the wrong person for too long and you could find yourself hours later with a shank in your belly and your blood swirling down the shower drain.

Her eyes, though, he really isn’t really able to tear away from them. “I’ve been on the bench a few times myself, but never done hard time. I could be in prison if I’d been caught for the more serious offences I’ve done.”

He’s not going to ask her what those offences were, just as she didn't ask him. Not everyone wants to lay out all the shit they’ve done that they’re not proud of, least of all those with a criminal history.

He doesn’t have to dwell on it for much longer because soon she’s kissing him, swirling her tongue all around and inside his mouth.

Next thing he feels is Launch unzipping his pants, and then her hand as she takes him all over again, right there on the rickety kitchen chair.

Launch feeds the dash-in cassette player a tape, and what pours out through the low-quality speakers is a drum tempo so wild and fast it's like the heart rate of a shrew.

"Whoa. Who's this?"

The drum solo has ascended and given way to a killer dive bomb and riffs that nearly melt the skin off his nose.

Launch side-eyes him, sizing up his _British Steel_ band tee. "You're wearing their shirt."

"Priest? Damn. They've gotten… speedier. I like it."

"You've got a lot of catching up to do. I've got some cassettes and CDs I can let you borrow. But if I find a scratch or dent on them, I'll stab you."

He could kiss her.

He gives her the address to his brother's house.

“That address is the Son house. That means your brother is-”

“Kakarot, yeah.”

When she takes her eyes off the road momentarily to cast him a confused look, he has to correct himself.

“I forget he goes by Goku now. But, yeah, he’s my little bro, alright..”

That’s a whole other backstory for a different time, and Raditz is grateful when Launch doesn’t press any further.

“That means your sister-in-law is Chi-Chi. Ah fuck, I can imagine the hell she gave Goku when she found out you were going to stay with them..”

Raditz gets the impression Launch seems to be more familiar with the Son family for reasons other than it being a small town.

“Listen, they’re a good family. They’re like the Ingalls of Frypan Mountain. Everyone here loves and respects ‘em. Don’t fuck this up. They’re giving you another chance.”

Raditz can’t help the indignation rise in his chest. He wants to tell her to mind her own goddamn business, that she doesn’t know him and has no right to judge him, but instead he snorts and takes another drag off the ol’ smoke stick, blowing the haze out the turn-handle window and holding in all of the frustration in his lungs.

His brother's farmhouse is further up the road from the trailer park Launch resides in, a more isolated, open area that’s far enough from the town to be its own little oasis.

On the field, he spots his sister-in-law carrying a basket full of vegetables, and her adolescent son steering a tractor.

“Good luck with the in-law. Hi Chi-Chi,” she waves awkwardly at the woman he can already feel glaring behind him, even though she’s a few meters away.

Chi-Chi’s judgemental eyes follow him from where she stands on the field, mouth sour and posture tense.

“I see that’s the company you keep.”she says once he's within ear shot.

Raditz’s eye involuntarily squints. Kakarot’s wife may give off the air of a saintly woman, but there’s a stick way too far up her ass that needs to be pulled out and tossed out into the pond.

He grinds his teeth to keep himself from spilling anything that may get him booted back out in the open. While he doesn’t particularly want to stay in this house, he really has nowhere else to go but the streets. So he smiles through his teeth, reigning in his vexation.

“I’m an adult who was just out havin’ some fun. Stayed out of trouble, just like you advised me.”

Chi-Chi does not let up.

“Let’s get a few things straight. I don’t really care who you… date, as long as you respect this house and not come back smellin’ like booze and sweat and other things I don’t need to say. I accepted you to stay because you’re my husband’s brother and that means you’re family, and even though you haven’t been in his life for most of it, he still cares enough about your well-being to give you a second chance, and I do happen to believe in second chances, but you gotta make an effort. That means either getting a job or helping out in the farm, the house, even with Gohan. I still don’t trust you enough to be alone with him, but I’d like to give Gohan a chance to get to know his only uncle. Does all that sound reasonable to you?”

In all honesty, it does, and he’s a bit resentful that something so reasonable seems more like a challenge to him. But he picks up a wheelbarrow, anyway, because what other options does he really have?

The afternoon sun is in full display by the time they finish their work in the fields, and once Raditz washes away the grime and sweat and scent of Launch off his person, he passes out for the rest of the afternoon until he’s called out for dinner.

The three Sons are waiting for him at the table, a picture-perfect family that’s marred once Raditz joins them. He takes a seat across from his nephew, who frowns and shrinks away ever so slightly when he tries his best to cast him a friendly smile, which he figures looks more like a snarl.

He’s the kind of kid Raditz would’ve roughed up in middle school, and Raditz gets the impression that this kids knows it.

“Heard you had an eventful first night in town.” His younger brother grins, showing two rows of perfect teeth, just as nearly everything else about him is perfect. He’s almost the spitting image of his father, except that Kakarot’s eyes are somehow softer, brighter, and when he smiles it’s so carefree and jovial that he wonders how the fuck he managed to stay so positive despite the hardships of being orphaned at a young age.

Chi-Chi clears her throat, her fork and knife poised as she could launch them into their throats at any second. “None of those types of conversations at the dinner table, please, especially in front of Gohan.”

The dinner is more of a banquet, and while Raditz had been thoroughly impressed with Launch’s unexpected culinary skills, Chi-Chi is another league of her own. Is this the definitive reason Kakarot married this woman? Aside from having a nice, curvaceous figure and big-doe eyes that make her look like a china doll, Raditz has to wonder exactly what else made Kakarot decide this was the woman he was going to be tied down to for the rest of his life. From the moment he arrived he could tell who was the one in charge, which wouldn’t really have been an issue if she wasn’t so damn overbearing.

“Talked to old man Finn today. Said he and the wife could use a ‘strappin young lad’ to do the heavier stuff around the house. Wouldn’t pay much, but it’s a start, right? And I know of a few other people who could use an extra set of hands. Me n’ Chi-Chi try to help other old folks as much as we can, but well, as you saw, we got plenty of work of our own to do here.”

Kakarot was barely a year old when their parents had been killed by gangsters, and Raditz had been almost six years old. All those years they never once communicated with each other, and now all of a sudden Kakarot tries to help him as if he’d known him all his life. He almost wants to tell him to fuck off to spite him, that it’s not fair he got the perfect life while he got the short end of the stick even though they had the same origins.

Raditz swallows down his resentment along with the mashed potatoes.

_‘They’re giving you another chance.’_

“Sure.”

“Great! Now I’ll have more time to train and play with this little squirt right here.” He ruffles the boy’s hair affectionately, the way his pa’ would do at times when he was being particularly affectionate, which was seldom.

Unlike their old man, though, Kakarot appears to be a good father. Every time Kakarot looks at the kid, it’s like he sees everything that’s good in the world.

“Gohan don’t need to train to fight. What he needs to do is to study.” Chi-Chi is slicing a cut of roast beef as she says this, and it’s not impossible for him to imagine her doing that with anyone that crosses her.

Which should have been warning enough to stop himself from saying, “There was an inmate locked away in a stricter, heavier-guarded section of the prison I was locked in... They called him Grampus. He’d been an average contributing member of society until the age of fifty-eight, when he finally began to act on his fantasies, He kidnapped children, many around his age,” he nods his head towards Gohan, ignoring the horrified gasp that Chi-Chi makes. “Tortured them, raped them, and then eventually killed them. It ain’t the kids’ fault that happened to them, but maybe if they’d known a little bit of self-defense they’d be alive right now, sitting at the dinner table with their own children.

The boy, who’d rarely spoken a word to him since he first got here, asks, “Would you like some tiramisu?”

Though they’re trying to keep their voices down, he can hear Kakarot and Chi-Chi arguing through the floorboards of the musty old attic, and it doesn’t take a genius to gather that the source of the quarrel is him.

He tries to mask the whispers with headphones plugged into the discman that his nephew lent him, playing one of the discs from the CD wallet Launch graciously let him borrow.

He’s listening to the latest Iron Maiden album featuring a guy that’s not Bruce Dickinson, and he nearly tosses it against the wall until he remembers Launch would probably slit his throat with the remaining shards if he did.

Raditz is in the process of swapping _Virtual XI_ in favor of one the classic Maiden albums he grew up with, when a few groans that were not previously there catch his ears.

They’re… Fucking.

Well, at least this confirms that the conception of his nephew isn’t the only time they’ve had sex. Watching them is like watching early-century prime-time television, wholesome, with the occasional fits of anger played for comedic-relief.

The issue isn’t that they’re screwing, it’s that hearing them screw is starting to tickle his groin, and Raditz may be a son of a bitch but he’s not about to get off on his brother and in-law having whatever puritan form of sex they’re having.

“Yes, right there, Goku. Ah, fuck.”

Maybe not so puritan.

Baldy doesn’t ask for his ID this time around. He simply glares at him resentfully as he lets him through without a sound.

It’s even more dead tonight than the night before, though there is one major, splendidly visible improvement.

Launch is wearing booty shorts this evening, the crease of her ass cheeks spilling out the hem just enough for it to be tantalizing.

She spots him before he makes it to the bar, a double shot of whiskey with no ice already waiting for him once he takes a seat.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

He can see that just above the soft curve of her breast, there’s a purplish mark forming. He put that there.

“Don’t expect free drinks every time you come in just ‘cause we’re fuckin’”

“Fuckin’ huh? So, like, ongoing.”

“Do you want to stop at this point?”

He smiles into his drink. “Hell no. Besides, if I was to sell this gorgeous body of mine it’d be for something more than just good whiskey.”

“So why don’t ya? You’d make a good buck doing that.”

“My parole officer would never let that fly. I’m supposed to be doing what he considers ‘honest, legitimate’ work or whatever.”

In the slammer, he’d met a few folks who’d been in the sex business, and he came to find out that the only thing wrong about it was how unsafe and disrepectful their clients could be.

“Speaking of which, I’ve got a gig in the morning. I’ll probably be heading out soon.”

Took him an hour to walk here. Last time he’d been lucky enough to hitch a ride. This time it was all on foot. He’d hiked all this way, and it isn’t even to get his dick wet.

He just had to be here. Watching Launch pour mediocre draft beer into a mug. Avoiding the soft grunts of his sister-in-law getting railed by his only sibling. Letting Launch know just how much he hates the latest Maiden album and how much he appreciates that At the Gates exists.

He’s considering staying another hour, willing to lose sleep just to hear her husky hot voice cuss at him for every dumb thing he says. Until the sweet licks of whiskey loosen his tongue too far and he’s mentioning the man she’s already warned him not to talk about.

“I told ya not to bring him up again.”

When she doesn’t return after another twenty minutes, despite there being only a spattering of customers, he leaves, knowing when he’s no longer welcome.

He almost whirls around to deck whoever it is that places a hand on his shoulder without his consent, halting his fist when he sees who it is.

“Don’t trifle with her,” Tien says, his eye-tattoo glaring.

He’s wearing a tight muscle top tonight, and under other circumstances Raditz would have appreciated the vision.

“How about you put that third eye bullshit to good use. Maybe then you’d see that she ain’t lookin’ through the same platonic filter that you see her in.”

For a moment he thinks Tien’s gonna punch him, almost wants him to because it’d be a little sobering, but the bald bastard merely scoffs and spits the other way, right next to his foot.

“I don’t have to explain myself to anyone,” he replies.

“Yeah, you really don’t,” Raditz admits. Tien isn’t willing to look into Launch’s heart anymore than she’s willing to look into Tien’s, and it really shouldn’t matter to him because it’s none of his goddamn business.

So, he fucks off and goes back to the attic, wanking it to the image of a handsome dark-skinned man with a cruel smile that Raditz will probably never see again. A man that will never and should never be allowed back into regular society.

"Turles..."


	2. Liquor You Give

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of our two horny headbangers being metal and horny, as well as some uncle-nephew bonding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW for anyone who may have been uncomfortable with "Good Lunch" having a sugar daddy, you can breathe a sigh of relief to know her relationship with Roshi is basically the same as it is in the OG Dragon Ball, with him as the provider and her being helpful WITHOUT any sexual contact. The key difference is that she knows what she's doing and has no issue in hustling a pervy old man into buying her shit just for looking pretty. Felt like I needed to clear that up.

His sister-in-law places a stack of bento boxes neatly wrapped in a flower-patterned cloth in his hands. 

“What’s this?” He knows what it is, it's just….

“Your lunch.”

Surprising. 

“You packed me lunch?”

“It was supposed to be for Goku, but he’s working the field today so he’ll just eat at home.”

“”Oh. Um. Thanks.”

No one’s packed a lunch for him since he was nine years old, and it was done by the last foster mother who remotely gave a shit about him. 

Chi-Chi is kind of like that lady. Strict and quick-tempered but with a kind, maternal side that surfaces every once in a while, at least from what she’s shown him. 

Yesterday when they’d been working the fields her mood had gradually shifted from irritatingly barking him orders to patiently instructing him the proper way to prune a flower. 

Today, not only has she packed his lunch, or more accurately, given him Goku’s lunch, she's dropping him off at the old couple’s house on her way to the bank. 

Kakarot waves them goodbye from the field, a dopey enthusiastic smile on his face. It’s still too early for Raditz to decide if he likes his younger brother yet. They've barely had any interaction since Raditz arrived, but for some reason Kakarot seems to like him, though Raditz wonders if Kakarot is capable of anything but positive thoughts and feelings. His endless stream of positivity is a bit abrasive on his thick, rugged hide, but he supposes he’ll have to get used to it. 

His younger brother may look almost identical to Bardock, but is absolutely nothing like the man that jizzed both of them out. 

Raditz has to wonder what sort of life Kakarot had following the death of his parents and before the one he has now.

He contemplates this while staring at the country-side scenery out the window, lighting a smoke. 

Chi-Chi immediately makes him put it out.

"You're killing yourself slowly with those things. Nothin’ but nasty chemicals and addictive properties, and studies show that second- hand smoke kills more people than smokers." 

Raditz suppresses the urge to roll his eyes, tucking the used cig back in its pack for later use. 

He’d tried to curb the habit before, when he realized how much a cig could cost you in the slammer. He’d traded in a few handjobs for smokes with attractive men he would’ve fooled around for free anyway, but he learned that it was just more convenient to not smoke at all. 

Until he got out, and his anxiety kicked in twofold,. The first person he encountered puffing on a smoke was soon being asked by Raditz if he could bum one off him, and thus he fell back into his addiction. 

He switches on the stereo to fill the awkward tension between them, tuning it to find the local rock station. When he hears guttural vocals over heavy riffs, he settles on that. 

"Devil’s music," Chi-Chi says, cutting the sound off. 

"That's part of the appeal." 

The hands on the steering wheel clench and unclench. 

After another uncomfortable stretch of silence, Chi-Chi dramatically huffs out air. 

"You know… Goku was really excited when he found out that you were being released. He’d been trying to track you down for years, but you were always so elusive, and the foster care system is broken to a point that even if you hadn’t been constantly shuffled around, it’d be really hard for simple folk like us to get a hold of ya. He even went to visit you in prison a few times, against my will, and you turned him down every time, so he eventually stopped, knowing it was pointless and it just made me upset."

Raditz remembers those visits. Throughout random dates within the span of time he'd been locked in, guards would interrupt him at whatever point of his tedious daily routine he was in to notify him that he had a visitor. Unless it was Zarbon, whose visits he’d only accepted because he provided masturbatory material for him to jerk off to later just by being there looking hot and beautiful, he’d turned away every one of the few assholes who did visit him away. 

Initially, he had accepted them, but after each visit he would end up angrier and more frustrated than if he’d just been left alone, so he stopped accepting anyone besides Zarbon altogether. By the time his brother had showed up and requested his presence, Raditz was too bitter and cowardly to receive him, believing Kakarot was there for the wrong reasons. 

He thought Kakarot had been there to let him know how much of a disappointment he was to their family, to mock or chastise him like the others had done before. He thought Kakarot must’ve been a cruel person like he was, a product of a tragic childhood and broken system. 

He’d never given him the chance to know him. 

“He never really gave up on you. Once human services contacted us, Goku put up a pretty damn good fight with me into accepting you. He said, ‘Plenty of other folks around here have a bad past, too, and now they’re my friends. Why wouldn’t I give my own blood brother the same chance?’ and I knew he was right and that I couldn’t change his mind. So now here you are.”

Now here he is, wondering where he’d be if he had grown up with his little brother like he should have. 

The town looks smaller from the viewpoint of the hills. Right before they reach it, Chi-Chi drops him off in front of a well-kept country-style house surrounded by mostly trees.

There’s an elderly couple lounging on a swing chair on the porch, the old man smoking a pipe with a bottle of gin at his feet. The old lady is playing sudoku, her smile darling and crinkled. 

“This is a good opportunity for you to build references, so make a good first impression. Dinner is at seven. Please don’t miss it.”

“Yes mom. I mean ma’am.”

Chi-Chi squints her eyes at him but doesn’t say anything, probably realizing it’s pointless to get huffy about a dumb quip like that. 

The elderly couple are sweeter and chiller than he thought they’d be. They let him take a cigarette break out on the porch, the old man even inviting him to take a hit of his pipe. 

“You alright there big guy?” The old man watches Raditz choke pathetically from the potent smoke, a cheerful expression on his face that hasn’t much changed since he got here.

Once he recovers, the old crone gives him a near-toothless smile. 

“My goodness, you’re a handsome one. The genes in that family, I tell you. Why, if I was still a young gal I’d be swooning right now.”

The old man cackles into his pipe. “You are swooning, Martha. Please go have a drink of water.” 

The tasks they have him do consist mostly of menial things such as changing light bulbs, mowing the lawn, retrieving hard-to-reach items, and not least of all, grocery shopping.

It’s on this grocery trip where he spots a familiar gun-toting babe perusing through the trash romance literature section of the store, deciding on which paperback novel she wants to take home to possibly get off to. Will it be the novel with a cover featuring a beefy, long-haired man passionately holding a scantily-clad damsel by the oceanside? Or will it be the beefier, medium-length haired man feverishly embracing a virginal lady with cleavage nearly pouring out of the neckline of her dress, near the countryside? Such a variety of choices, how could one possibly decide?

“Somehow I’m not surprised that’s what you’re into.”

She nearly jumps out of her combat boots when she hears him, her hand pretty damn close to the hilt of her gun. She relaxes when she sees it’s him, her startled features settling into a look of annoyance. 

“Ya can’t just sneak up on me like that. Thought you’d know better.” 

“Sorry.”

She’s wearing flannel over a Motörhead band tee today, and jeans that hug her hips low so that when she bends you would probably get a view of the ‘V’of her thong. It’s a far cry from the bright colored tops and ultra high-rise jeans of the 80s, and he thinks it’s a look that he can get into, especially on her. 

She smirks at his appreciative gaze of her form, and when she sees the cart full of groceries she chuckles. 

“Chi-Chi having you run errands now?”

“Not exactly. This is for an elderly couple. They’re paying me to do normal stuff they can’t really do anymore. Although I suspect they actually can, they just don’t feel like it.”

“Heh, so they’ve got you as hired muscle. Well, I’m glad you found something.”

“Thanks.”

The pause afterward is heavy, and Raditz spurs his heels and decides to break the silence. 

“Listen, about last night-”

“Don’t. It’s really that simple. Don’t mention him again. And this is the last time I’ll say it.”

“You got it,” he says, and he means it. He hasn’t seen much of the other people in the town, and maybe he could find another fuck-buddy if he really wants to, but after their first night together, he really doesn’t want it to be the last, and he suspects it’s the same for her or she would’ve walked in the other direction by now instead of anxiously playing with her hair and staring at him. 

“Tonight’s karaoke night. You should come. Most people can’t sing for shit, but even the bad ones are entertaining. Starts at 9 p.m.”

Raditz grins, savoring the way her hips move as she walks away from him, but not before she settles on a paperback featuring a beefcake with the longest hair out of all the other proganists, the lady he’s carrying in his arms blonde and dressed in nothing but white linen, and she looks a little bit like Launch.

On his way out, a cop that looks to be around five feet tall enters the store just as Raditz makes his way out. Even behind the dark shades Raditz can see him scope him out, the sheriff star on his chest seeming to glare at him. 

“Hey you,” he says, his authoritative voice hitting Raditz in the back. Shit. 

Raditz turns his body only about half-way, looking over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Aren’t you Goku’s brother? What's the name…. Radish?”

“Raditz.”

“That’s it. Welcome. If you need anything, I’ll be around. You can find me in the station next door.” Through his friendly words and smile he can read the undercurrent of warning in his tone. He’s been around cops enough to know how to gauge them.

He nods his head and wheels the utility cart full of goods back to the old folks’ home, where he ends up raking in a decent amount of pay for nine hours worth of work, with the occasional smoke break in between. 

Raditz is back at the Son house by dinner time, eating as fast as he can without choking. Though not as fast as the other man at the table. If Chi-Chi isn’t scolding her husband about his abhorrent table manners, it’s probably because she’s given up at this point. 

“Did you know that chickens were first domesticated for cockfighting in Southern Asia? Before eventually being domesticated for food around the Hellenistic period. Poor things. Their whole existence revolves around being exploited.” Gohan is contemplating a cut of chicken breast as he reports this historical bit of information, stuffing a cut of it into his mouth seconds later. 

Kakarot raises a chicken thigh in toast. “Here’s to the Hellenists for discovering how tasty this bird is.”

Raditz puts down the drumstick in favor of a carrot, staring at his nephew. “How old are you again?”

“I’ll be ten next month.”

Chi-Chi lights up at the mention of the anniversary of when her son escaped her uterus. “I’m going to throw him the best birthday party ever! We’ll invite all of his friends-”

“If I had any...”

“-And family. That includes you, so you better be there.”

He really has no choice.

As Chi-Chi trails off into listing preparations for the impending birthday party, Kakarot looks at him and smiles. “The Tulips said that you did a great job today!"

“Yeah, I guess so.... Thanks for the gig, by the way."

Kakarot's smile stretches even wider. “You’re welcome. And hey! I think I may have found someone else who needs an extra pair of hands. I’ll give you the info when they give me the go.”

After dinner, Raditz takes a quick shower and throws on a fresh pair of briefs- the second purchase he made since being released- along with the weathered Iron Maiden shirt he’d been wearing on his last day of freedom. A little snugger on him now, particularly around the arms, but he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he likes the way the fabric stretches tightly over his pecs. 

He finds Kakarot and Gohan working on a 18,000 piece puzzle, though in reality it’s more of Kakarot struggling to find a piece that fits the other piece while Gohan is weaving away like the brainiac that he is. 

Chi-Chi is clearing off the plates, pausing when she sees him gathering up his combat boots. 

“Heading to the bar again?”

“I’ll be like Cinderella and come back before the clock strikes midnight. Pinky promise” he says, just barely containing the sarcasm as he lifts up his smallest digit. 

“The one where Launch works? You dog! Have fun and say hi to her for me.”

“Don’t encourage him, Goku!”

“Ah, come one Chi-Chi. Let the guy enjoy his freedom. I’m sure Launch will take good care of him. Ow.”

She’s given him a swift whap on the head. “Go help me with the dishes. Now.”

She looks back at Raditz. “Well I suppose I’d rather you not sneak out like a teenager like you did last night. Yes, we heard you.”

And I heard you, he recalls with amusement. 

“Try not wake any of us when you come back.”

He’s throwing on his leather jacket when he notices his nephew has stopped working on the puzzle to stare intently at his shirt. 

“Iron Maiden, a torture and execution device commonly believed to have been invented and implemented in the eighteenth century, when in reality it was likely done for the purpose of exhibition… Why is there an image of a grinning, skeletal monster on there? Is it a representation of the victims that were once believed to have been forced into its lethal embrace?”

Jesus the kid is fucking weird. He respects that. 

“It’s a heavy metal band, and this monster dude right here is their mascot, Eddie. They’re named after the torture device, I think. Probably, yeah.”

“My mother says heavy metal is the devil’s music, but the devil isn’t real. So I don’t believe heavy metal is evil, either.”

“You did let me borrow the discman, let me return the favor now that your parents are, uh, distracted.”

They look over to where the married couple have shifted from squabbling to giggling and playfully nudging each other as they collaborate in washing the dishes, giving each other bedroom eyes that only Radittz can perceive. At least he hopes so, for the sake of this strange nerd sitting in the living room. 

“There’s a booklet full of CDs next to my bed. A, uh, friend let me borrow them so be extra careful with them. I trust that you will. Don’t tell your mom. Or your dad, just in case. I recommend the first Black Sabbath album, for starters. Then listen to whatever catches your attention.”

Gohan blinks at him a few times, and then cracks a smile he’s never before directed at him until this moment. “Okay. Send my regards to Launch.”

He hears someone squawking the lyrics to whatever shitty country song they’re attempting to cover, and Raditz can already tell this is going to be either too painful to sit through or funny as hell. 

The Bootstrap Bar is busier tonight, to the point where he even has to bump elbows with someone else at the stools. 

It’s the guy he’s seen Tien with at the diner, only now noticing him because of the X-shaped scar on his cheek. 

He’s drinking a cocktail of sorts, probably an Old School, and is chatting with Launch until he appears, the two of them pausing their conversation and turning their attention to him. 

The man is even more attractive up close, with dark brown eyes and long black hair that reaches past his shoulders, the kind of guy he’d go for if the guy wasn’t already taken by baldy. 

Besides, there’s an even foxier creature right next to him, and she’s wearing a tight dress and fishnets this evening. 

He does notice that she’s noticed him checking the other guy out, because there’s an exasperated hint of amusement on her brow and lips when he greets her with a grin. 

“Yamcha, this is Raditz. Goku’s brother.”

While he doesn’t really like the idea of being constantly referred to as “Goku’s brother,” he’s going to have to get acclimated to it, since that appears to be his life now. 

“Pleased to meet you,” Yamcha says, with a tone indicating that he means the opposite. 

Probably has heard unfavorable things about him through baldy, probably thinks he’s nothing but a lowlife, and while that wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, he’s trying to change, damn it. 

“He doesn’t like me,” Raditz says once Yamcha dismisses himself immediately after their introduction. 

“He’ll come around,” she says, her gaze following the attractive man as he walks over to where Tien is at his post, nudging his shoulder in a casual, amicable, we’re-just-bros kind of way. Even from here Raditz can sense the repressed sexual tension between the two. 

Raditz doesn’t miss the subtle hurt in Launch’s eyes, the movement in her throat as she swallows, and he can’t help feeling a little sad for her. 

He used to be in love once not too long ago. Or he’d thought he’d been. Like Launch, he’d been smitten with the wrong person, and it took a strong dose of reality to help him get over him. Mostly over him. He did cum at the memories of him last night, which is something he’s not proud of. 

He’s more interested in the person in front of him at the moment, and wants her to feel the same way, 

“You look extra babelicious tonight. Better than Doro Pesch.” 

He has to almost scream it over the horrid wails of another talentless loser torturing them all with the aid of a microphone. 

Launch guffaws. “The fuck out of here, nobody looks better than Doro Pesch.”

When she returns to him with another drink, he tells her, “Hey, um listen, I hope you don’t mind, but I kind of let Kakaro- Goku’s son borrow your CDs for the time being. He’s a good kid. I know he’ll be careful.Oh, and he sends his regards.”

Launch chuckles. “On my part, I don’t mind, I’m actually kind of glad. It’s Chi-Chi you gotta worry about if she finds out.”

“Oh, I know.”

A particularly grating screech emits out of the speakers, and nearly everyone inside the bar either covers their ears or scrunch their features in torment. 

“Aren’t you gonna sign up for karaoke? I’m just dying to see you embarrass yourself in front of everyone.”

So he does. There’s three more people ahead of him that they all have to suffer through before he gets his turn. 

Raditz takes one last shot of whiskey when his turn comes up, taking the stage and the greasy mic into his grip 

The speakers start transmitting the opening dual guitar riffs to “Victim of Changes,” and he lets the sound flow over his body as he readies his lungs. 

He may have not been allowed to play music in his cell, but he never really stopped singing, not even when his cellmate and the others would complain. It was a privilege he had to quite literally fight for. He sang to keep his sanity in check. His voice is the one instrument no one could ever really take away from him. 

He sings the first verse. “Whiskey woman don’t you know you’re driving me insane!”

And people already start cheering. He sings the rest of the lines without a hitch, in no need of the screen projector as he already knows exactly which lyric he has to sing and how to sing it.

By the time his turn finishes, there’s a barrage of clapping, and some of the patrons are even standing as they cheer him on.

He looks over to where Launch would be at the bar, and finds that she’s making a bee-line towards the stage. 

Without warning, she grabs the mic from him and announces, “For those of you waitin’ for a drink, I’ll be back in five minutes. Till then hang tight.”

She practically tosses the mic back to the DJ and grabs Raditz by the wrist determinedly, towing him out of the bar and into the passenger’s seat of her truck where she rides him until they both cum in less than the allotted time. 

The lights in the farmhouse are all off save for the one in the attic. Raditz is fairly certain that he’d turned it off before he headed out. 

He shuffles into the Son’s home as quietly as he can, and cautiously lifts the access door to the attic.

His brows scrunch up in perplexation when he sees who’s sitting in the middle of the bed, legs crossed, with a pair of headphones over his ears. Gohan slides them off when he spots his surprised uncle. 

“What’re you doing in here, kid? Have you been here all night?”

“I snuck in when my parents went to bed. 

The boy placidly opens the lid of the discman and angles it so that Raditz can see the disc that’s in there.

“How do you pronounce this band’s name?”

“Not a band, a guitar player. It’s Yngwie Malmsteen. He’s Swedish, hence the weird name.”

“Yngwie Malmsteen. The neoclassical and baroque techniques that he implements into his electric guitar playing are amazing.”

Raditz smirks, sitting on the floorboards off to the side of the bed as the ceiling is too low for him to stand all the way up without humping his back.. “Good shit huh?”He’s a guitar prodigy, He can get a little wankery sometimes but I ain’t about to his critisize his guitar playing when I can’t even do half the tricks he does.”

Gohan scoots to the edge of the bed, a fascinated expression on his face. 

“You can play the electric guitar?”

Raditz shrugs. “A little. I was never that good at it, so I just stuck to bass and vocals. I’m probably not that good at bass anymore, either. It’s been a good while. I can still sing, though”

He recalls the last few hours at the bar, and how much he’d enjoyed singing to an audience again, even if it was just to a number of country bumpkins who knew little of good metal. What had given him more satisfaction was the way Launch looked at him while he sang, like she was seconds away from tearing off his clothes and giving the audience an live X-rated performance. 

He has to vigorously shake off the memory of Launch hiking up her skirt and moving the crotch of her panties to one side so that he could acces her cunt. His innocent, nerdy nephew is currently speaking to him about his favorite subject. 

“I started with the first Black Sabbath album, as you suggested, and I can see why my mom thinks it’s the devil’s music. There were several references to Satanism and the occult. Morbidly fascinating… Now I’m going by reverse alphabetical order. I’m still on Yngwie Malmsteen .”

Is this… pride he feels? Not for himself, but for this youth that happens to share his same bloodline. A kid who has everything in the world he needs. An education, a loving family, a warm bed to come home to every night. Maybe he’s been missing a little edge in his wholesome life. 

“Launch doesn’t need ‘em back until the end of the week. You have time to get through them until then.”

“Don’t you need them?”

“It’s okay, I’ll catch up another time.” 

“Thanks. Um, Uncle Raditz?”

It’s the first time he’s called him that, and it starts giving him fuzzies in his chest that he violently stomps down on as he looks at the shy kid inquisitively. 

“You’re not so bad after all.”

Raditz sighs through his nose, grinning. 

“You’re not so bad either, kid, but you should probably go back to your room. Your ma will kill me if she finds out you were up here.”

Gohan scoops up the discman and CD booklet into one of his arms. Before he leaves, he looks at Raditz with those wise, kind eyes of his. 

“My mom… Can be a difficult person. But she always has the best intentions at heart. And she actually is very sweet….Goodnight, uncle.”


	3. Good God, Pluck Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THERE IS AN EXPLICIT SEX SCENE IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS CHAPTER. If you are uncomfortable with that, I marked off around where it ends and where it begins,using "XXXXXXXXXXX" as the perimeters of that scene, though to be honest almost the entire chapter is steamy and will still include sexual content. However, the more graphic sex scene will still be marked in case you can't handle descriptions of penetration and femdom-type of play.

Raditz pops a mint in his mouth and takes a quick whiff of his armpit, assessing the level of b.o. he can get away with without being too repelling. Good enough, he supposes, he hasn’t sweated off all of the deodorant yet.

He walks in a leisurely pace as he looks for a single-wide mobile home that’s tan with a green trimming. Doesn't remember the unit number, just that it's somewhere in this quiet trailer park, and that there should be a janky green pickup truck with a dent on its rear side parked in front of the curb 

As he roams through the quiet neighborhood, his mind goes back to the earlier years of his childhood when he, his birth parents, and the squealing fat baby that was Kakarot lived cramped in a single-room mobile home in a shady as fuck district that was littered with snack wrappers and road kill. He hated living there, but most of his best memories, along with some of his worst, are attached to that shabby place, and he can’t help feeling a small, sad stab in his gut when he thinks of his mother. 

He's been thinking about her a lot lately, of both of his parents, and it probably has to do with the fact that he has to see Kakarot's face every day. 

Kakarot. He's been incredibly helpful the last few days, so much that it's almost stifling. Offering him rides to his odd jobs, getting him those odd jobs, and even letting him borrow clothes that somewhat meet Raditz's measurements. 

It's Kakarot's tee shirt and jeans that he's wearing today, clothing he'd never pick out himself except that these were the least hideous of the options offered to him. It was either wear the same smelly clothes from yesterday or wear this garish yellow shirt, trying to diminish its ugliness under his trusty leather jacket.

Before he finds the trailer, he spots the person he's here for. She’s kneeling over the garden, looking hella good as usual, and is industriously pulling out weeds with her gloved hands. 

“I would watch a gardening show with you as the host,” he tells her as she spins around in alarm. 

Her face brightens when she sees that it's him, and he can't help but feel a sliver of satisfaction tug at his lips in seeing her perking up at his unannounced visit. 

"Hey good lookin'! Haven't seen ya at the Bootstrap in a few days." 

"Been keepin' busy doing gigs here and there. Have you been counting the days that I haven't graced you with my presence?"

"Don't let it get to your head, Postboy."

Raditz looks down at the ugly garment that has the odd name printed onto it, ears getting warm. 

“Kakarot's. He sure does like loud, vibrant colors. Fits his personality, I guess."

"Kakarot. That was Goku's name before he got adopted, wasn't it?" 

The conversation is getting off track, and he's not here to talk about his younger brother. 

"Yeah… Uh, listen, I’m not here to talk about Kaka- Goku. I was thinking maybe I could take you out to lunch? Maybe that diner in town with the blueberry pancakes?" 

Launch smiles, and while he wouldn’t necessarily call it a sweet smile, it’s warm enough to do something to his belly that feels like a lick of whiskey in his gut. 

“I’ve got another place in mind. We’ll have to drive out to the next big town over, but I don’t mind gettin’ us out that way. There’s a pretty rad record store not far from there, either. Come on in and have a beer while I get myself cleaned up. Won't take long.”

“I can help you undress," he teases, despite being more hungry than horney at the moment. 

He can feel her roll her eyes through the back of her head.

The place looks the same as the first time he was here. Clean, small, and with a few band posters taped on the cheap wooden walls. There's one major difference, though, and it's in the form of a furry, black cat with a white belly and yellow eyes. It meows at him as he steps into the living room, nudging his ankle curiously as it smells him up. 

"That's Tina. She comes and goes when she wants… She usually don't like anybody, except for me and Yamcha, but she seems to like you." 

Tina has moved from assessing him with her nose to rolling over her back and begging to be rubbed. 

He's not really a cat person, but it's hard to resist feeling that fluffy tummy. It's been so long since he's petted an animal, he'd forgotten how satisfying it is. 

A soft chuckle escapes him as he continues to pet it, and when he looks up, he finds Launch smiling longingly at him, a twinkle in her eye. 

“What about our date,” he asks her as she lures him onto her weathered couch. Her approach is less aggressive than the last time she’d seduced him on karaoke night, but no less fervent.

“We’ll get to it. I just need to have you first.” The husky, wanton register of her voice seals away any flimsy hesitation he may have had, and so he surrenders to her as she lowers him to sit and then straddles him. He moans into her mouth as they continue to swap tongues and she pushes her groin further against his, responding with a moan of her own. 

Even through the layers of fabric he can feel her heat as his pelvis responds instinctively to her motions, cupping her ass and encouraging the waves to pick up pace.

The leather jacket feels too hot and bulky against the increasing temperature of his skin, so he slides it off and discards it to the side, followed by his shirt, which Launch assists him in taking off.

Her fervent eyes rake his torso hungirly as her fingers graze the solid muscles of his pecs and abdomen, biting her lip in a way that sends a zap directly to his groin. 

“You’re so goddamn sexy,” she tells him, and lowers her face to begin nibbling on his neck. He’s breathing hard as her tongue and lips trail around his neck and move further down to his chest, where she tugs firmly on one nipple with her teeth and pinches the other with her fingers.

“Fuck, Launch,” he cries out, needing to see more of her, to feel more of her so he can lavish her with the same attention. 

He tugs at her shirt and raises it over her head, rewarded with the sight of her flushed chest barely contained within a wiry, thin bra. He kisses the flesh right above the curve of the bra, sliding down a cup just enough so that he can flick his tongue over a hard, rosey nipple. 

His hands work on the latches as he sucks on that lovely nipple, getting impatient when the damn thing won’t come off.

Launch softly chuckles. “Let me help you with that.”

More experienced in the ways of lady undergarments, Launch removes her bra without any difficulty, her full, pale breasts bouncing as they are unburdened from the oppressive material.

He cups both of them in his warm hands, the rough pads of his thumbs reverently smoothing over the stiff nipples. 

Her expression is lewdly fascinated as she watches him appreciate her, and he has to tear away from that vision so that he can put his mouth over one of the rosey buds of her breasts.

Her back arches, tangling her hands in her hair as he sucks and tugs and licks.  


It's while he's sucking diligently on one of lovely tits that he hears a soft 'mrow', looking over to find two yellow eyes with slitted pupils staring intently at them 

With a sucking, wet noise Raditz removes his mouth from her flesh and says, with no small amount of frustration, "Tina is staring at us."

Launch is still flushed as she glances over her shoulders and replies, "Yeah, that’s what cats do. Ignore her." 

He’s about to reply that it’s hard to do that when she traps his words with a kiss, redirecting his attention back to her, to her gorgeous body, to her succulent lips. 

Tina leaps from the carpet onto the arm of the couch, making its way up to the top of the headrest next to his hair. It then starts licking his hair as if it were grooming him, which is probably what it's doing.

"Whoa. Okay wait, this is too fuckin weird. I can't concentrate if your cat is licking me while you're lickin' me too. Can we continue in your room?"

Launch lets out an exasperated half-laugh. "Fine, but if we're going to keep hanging out you're gonna have to get used to getting creepily stared at from time to time. Come on."

She leads them into her bedroom, gasping in surprise when he scoops her up bridal-style, giggling by the time they reach the bed. 

The bedroom door is closed so that no curious felines can enter and ruin the mood. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He tosses her playfully, eagerly, onto the bed, tugging at her jeans. They come off along with her panties, and his mouth waters profusely when he sees that there’s already a trail of wetness trickling down her pink, shaved pussy. 

When he slides his fingers into that slit, they go in so deep and come out so wet he has to lick the juices off of them, relishing the taste of her musk 

He wants to have more it, needs closer access to it, so he bends down and swipes his tongue up her creamy slit. 

“Oh, fuck yes,” she says, fisting her hands into his hair, shoving his mouth deeper into her wet, hot cunt. 

His cock is straining against his jeans as he laps her up hungirly, aching to be released and stroked by his own hand. But he wants to concentrate on just her for now, to finish her off before he unloads all of his pent up stamina. 

As his tongue keeps prodding into her, one of her hands releases its grip on his hair to rub on the swollen bud just above her opening, teasing it in circular motions.. Watching her play with herself makes him even harder, so much it almost hurts. Finally, he allows himself some reprieve when he unzips his pants and takes his engorged cock into his hands. He strokes it as he continues to lick and she continues to rub, and then her legs start to quiver, and her pussy gets tense as he hears her groan and mewl so loudly it’s enough to almost make him cum on the mattress. He torturously waits until she’s finished for him to kneel over her and finish himself off on her belly, moaning as the last of his seed spills and covers her torso in a milky film.

They’re both breathing hard as he looks down on her covered in his cum, his cock still stiff and looming over her. He wipes her off with a towel, making sure to get every last drop that he can. He is a gentleman, after all. 

When that’s done, he kisses her some more, letting her taste her own scent on his tongue. 

He’s trailing more kisses sloppily down her neck, but then she pushes him away, commanding him get up and to kneel on the mattress. 

He obeys, curious as to what her intention is. 

Giving him a look that could bend any person to her will, Launch’s hand goes on the red band that he always wears around his bicep, and he almost prevents her from removing it but he too wild with lust to stop her. To his delighted surprise and fascination, she lowers her back and wraps the band around his already throbbing cock. 

The pressure makes his erection even harder, and it’s almost painful how tight it is around him. Launch stares into his eyes as she bends down and she licks the precum off the slit of his head. She doesn’t suck on it, teasing him with her tongue as it travels down his aching shaft. Raditz gasps in alarm as her mouth takes in one of his testicles, then groans as she moves on and licks the other, sucking on the skin of his sack. She strokes his shaft as she continues to debase him with this licentious technique, and nearly sees stars when he feels something wet run over his taint. 

“Fuck, Launch what’re you- FUCK!”

He’s lost his balance and sinks further into the mattress on his elbows as she swirls her tongue lasciviously inside of him, still stroking his shaft as she stimulates him in a particularly sensitive area of his person. 

Raditz has had this done to him before but never by a woman, and usually it’s him who’s performing the task.

He’s just getting used to the feel of her tongue when he feels something stiffer slip inside of him, first one digit, then two, and soon he’s being driven to insanity as her fingers continue to prod him and her mouth encloses over his red-hot dick. 

“I’m gonna… I’m gonna cum….” And he does, but not inside her mouth like he was intending to. Before he can, Launch releases his cock and angles it towards his torso, where she jerks him off until he ejaculates all over himself, his own cum landing on his torso and chest. 

“I like seeing you like this,” she tells him, her face arduous and tinted as she gazes at him in this sinful state of dishevelment. 

"Filthy woman.

His heart is racing so fast that he thinks he might pass out, but she’s evidently not through with him yet. After she cleans him off, she climbs on top of him, sitting on his abs and rubbing her dripping groin against the ridges of his muscles, wakening his cock all over again as they stare into each other’s eyes. 

“Goddamnit, Launch, just sit on my cock already,” he sounds more desperate than he intended, and she grins lecherously at him as she indulges him and descends down onto his dick.

They both moan out in sweet relief as she envelops his cock completely, her walls so wet that his dick goes in without much resistance, but man is she still tight. 

Her hands gain purchase on his pecs as her ass bounces up and down his stiff cock, so fast his hips can hardly keep up, so he lets her do most of the movement, meanwhile all he can do is moan and breath desperately as she rides him. 

As much as he’s enjoying her on top of him, he wants to be even deeper inside her, to let this last a little longer before she drains him dry, so he lifts his back from the mattress and takes her by the hair, pulling her closer and into a deep, heated kiss. 

He then lowers her back on to the mattress, angling her knees so that they are bent and resting on his shoulders. With a heady wave of satisfaction, Raditz watches as her eyes roll when he buries himself deeply into her, starting off slowly before his hips pick up speed. 

They’re both shouting all kinds of obscenities and words that make no sense, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the neighbors can hear everything that is transpiring in this bedroom. The slaps, the sucks, the moans, all of it. 

“Tell me how good I make you feel again,” he says to her, positioning her legs so that they are pressed together and raised, continuing to drive himself deep inside her warm cunt. 

“You make me feel so fucking goood, oh god, I’ve never… had a dick this good.”

Her moans get louder and earthier, and soon he feels the familiar tenseness of her walls clench and quiver all around him, releasing even more juices down his shaft as she spasms out the last of her ecstasy. 

Raditz feels his own release coming, pulling out at the last second to unburden his load on her naked, pink flesh. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He collapses right next to her, panting and in a euphoric daze. 

They’re both sticky and drenched in sweat, and there’s no way the two of them can just throw some clothes on without looking disheveled and reeking of sex.

“So let’s take a shower,” Launch suggests, and it doesn't take long before she has her palms against the shower wall, screaming out profanities as Raditz enters her from behind. 

When the last of his cum washes down the drain, he turns Launch over and kisses her, their kiss extra wet and slippery as water drizzles over them. 

He slides his hands down her curvy figure, admiring how the rivulets run down her shapely, naked body, how absolutely beautiful she looks even with ruined makeup and her hair in disarray. 

"Want me to get the back for ya?" He asks her, running his fingers down her spine. She trembles under his touch, then chuckles. 

"You just want another excuse to stare at my ass." She lets him anyway, humming blissfully as he circles the soapy loofah around her back and shoulders. 

She then takes it from him, puts it away, and then grabs the bar of soap he's been using to work on his back, bringing it around his torso to slide it up and down his abs.

"Washboard abs," she teases, and it's so stupid that he laughs along with her, enjoying the sound of the two of them together. 

Once they're thoroughly clean and dry, he starts to gather up his clothes, putting on the first thing he finds, which is his band tee.

Launch lights a smoke from where she sits on the bed, still completely undressed and looking completely relaxed. He wonders if now that she’s had her way with him, she’s second-guessing or contemplating on cancelling the date, which to his chagrin, would be a massive disappointment. 

Launch eyes him and pats a spot on the bed next to her, and he complies, stealing a hit from her cigarette, letting it blissfully fill up his lungs. 

“Did you mean what you said earlier, that I’m the best dick you’ve ever had?”

Launch nearly chokes on the puff, clearing her throat. “Was the heat of the moment. But if you really need that extra boost in your ego, I don’t say things I don’t mean, even during sex. Especially during sex. If I don’t like what you’re doing, I’m letting you know.”

“Well then it’s a good thing I know how to make you scream.”

Launch snorts, and after another huff, she takes a flask from the end table closest to her, and passes it to him, from which he gratefully takes a swig. Rum.It burns his throat and travels down his bloodstream, loosening his muscles into a buzzing relaxation. He melts into the pillows, staring at the cracked ceiling overhead. Boring. He’d much rather stare at the sexy lady right next to him, so he turns on his side and watches her finish off her smoke. 

His eyes travel over the length of her beautiful body, taking in every lovely detail and imperfection on her skin, focusing on the white scar that snakes down from her elbow to her wrist. 

Impulsively, he traces it with an index finger, noting how her flesh jumps at his touch.

He then thumbs the faint scar on his abdomen, recalling the fateful night he received it. 

He doesn’t want to ruin whatever they have going on here, but he also would rather let her know what a piece of shit he is before the two of them go any further, if they go any further. A part of him almost believes it’s for the best that they don’t. 

“I…. We robbed a bank. Me and two of my comrades- former comrades. We held a national bank at gunpoint and then sped off with the cash. Spoiler alert: We got caught..”

Launch sits upright and looks down at him with awakened curiosity. “No shit… Continue.”

Raditz sighs, a measure of relief washing over him in seeing her not recoil. 

“Things were going alright, we knew we were going to have about a ten minute head start before the authorities caught on, but Nappa, that fucking bald idiot, lost control of the wheel and we went off the road. I was going to surrender until that same fucking idiot starting shooting at the cops, and before I could even pull out my gun, I got hit in the gut, went down with just that one fucking shot. Might’ve been the thing that saved my life, actually, cause I was in too much pain to get back up. Meanwhile, that bald idiot Nappa ended up getting gunned to death. Vegeta, the other fucker involved and the mastermind mind behind this doomed operation, played dead until he was able to sneak up on a cop and take them hostage. Fucking booked it with a couple bags of cash and stole a cop car in the process. Crazy mother fucker. At the time I resented him for leaving me behind but to be honest I would've done the same had I had the chance, no question about it.”

He takes another long, hard pull of rum and, feeling emboldened by its effects and Launch’s lack of visible revulsion. 

"He'd been hit a few times himself so they eventually caught up to him, and they proposed a deal in exchange for me to testify against him, since he did most of the planning and all that other bullshit. I was so fuckin’ angry and bitter at the time that I took the plea deal, fucking ratted him out like the punk-ass I was. But it got me eighteen with the possibility of parole, and he got twenty, no chance of parole. He's still inside there, seething and probably plotting his revenge for when he's released. I'd say I got about another ten years to live relatively worry-free till he's out and hunts me down. That would be so like him, to act revenge, and honestly, he has the right to it. 

Now he sees her react irritably. 

“So, what? You’re just gonna hang tight till he comes out to find and kill ya? That’s bullshit! Thought you had more spark than that.”

“I don’t have a death wish on me. I want to live. I was so close to dying that I even saw the other end of the tunnel, and it wasn’t white and shimmery like you hear in those tv-friendly testimonies. It was black. It was nothing. I don’t want to go back to that. But I do know that Vegeta is gonna try to kill me once he’s out, I’m gonna have to keep running till he finds me. When and if, but mostly when, the fucker does find me one of us ain’t coming out alive.”

It’s hard to admit, even inside his own head, that the person who’d mostly end up dead is him. He’s always been the weakest of the three. Nappa might’ve been a dumb bald fuck but he had the charisma that would often negotiate them out of shitty situations, and Vegeta, well that short, angry son of a bitch had everything else. The wits, the brains, the guts, the power. Raditz, he was just the sidekick, there for the ride as long as it got him things he needed, mainly wanted. 

“I hope it’s you who comes out alive, then, Radish-boy.” Her hair tumbles and brushes the sides of his face as she looms over him, her eyes bright and serious.“If you think you’re the only one with a fucked up past, well, you got another thing coming. Maybe I didn’t rob no god dang national bank like some sort of Western outlaw, but my hands aren’t that much more cleaner than yours. Ain’t proud of it, and I can tell that you aint’ either.”

Raditz smiles cynically, his curiosity piqued. 

“You gonna tell me your fucked up history, too?”

“After tacos. I’m fuckin’ starving! Need to refuel after burning all those calories.”

Before they get up and off the bed, Launch holds him in place, crushing her plump lips against his. If she hadn’t drained him dry, he would’ve been ready to go for another round, to fill her up once again with his girth, but then his belly growls and he realizes that he too can use some fuckin’ tacos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk if I want to include how their date went in the next chapter. I wrote out some of it but it kind of turned out a little too banal and not really necessary to move what little plot this story has forward. It would just basically be nonsensical fluff lol.


	4. Get Up, Get Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut in this one, but there will be in the next chapter. For now, have a bit of cute and a bit of angst. And other stuff.

They’re sitting on the back of her pickup truck, facing the sun as it dips leisurely into the trees. The air smells like pine cones and wet wood. His lungs breathe in pure oxygen. Birds chipper away with their mating calls and woodland critters scurry up trees and dive into bushes.

The view from the hills is breathtaking, peaceful. In direct contrast to the words spilling out Launch's mouth. 

"Lunch had to stop me or I would've ended up killing the fucker," Launch says, flicking on a lighter and pressing it against the end of a cig. 

So much for pure air. 

"Too bad I didn't,” she adds, frustrated at the outcome of an incident that happened several years ago. 

Apparently, she’d nearly beaten a man to death with a bat for attempting to sexually assault her and her twin sister, and while Raditz is livid anyone would forcibly try to touch Launch, there's at least a tiny sense of gratification in knowing she'd fucked him up good. 

“Fucker deserved it, but Lunch is so damn kind hearted that even after he’d threatened us with a knife, she still begged me to spare his life. She was worried that I’d do hard time for manslaughter or whatever the hell they’d charge me with, and who knows, maybe I might’ve... If I’d been caught or turned myself in.”

He steals a hit from her, unable to resist the temptation of nicotine. He’s been smoking them on and off since he was twelve years old, after one of his foster siblings pressured him into trying one while their foster parents were locked in their bedroom having sex. He wants to quit one day. Just not yet. 

“Would you have turned yourself in?”

Launch swipes the smoke back from his fingers, her expression contemplative. 

“I’m not sure. Maybe. I’ve gotten away with a lot of shit, but I’ve never killed a man, so I’m not sure what I would’ve done. What we did end up doing is pressing charges for attempted burglary and assault but, well, he hardly did any time for that. Not surprised if he’s back in the cells. Not surprised if he isn’t.”

Raditz exhales through his nose, pondering. 

He's met many different types of convicts in the system, some who deserved to serve all the time they were delivered, some who were arguably victims of bad luck and timing. It’s hard to say what Launch would’ve been sentenced to had she gone through with killing the man whom she'd protected herself and her sister against. 

If he’d been a lawyer, he might have been able to give her an idea. But what little Raditz knows about the justice system is through mediocre lawyers and other inmates, and they’re not exactly the most reliable of people. 

“Lunch never blamed me for what happened, but I couldn’t help feeling like if I’d never been dealing, he wouldn’t’ve known where I lived. I was his intended target. He didn’t even fucking know I had a twin sister, because I’d always tell my customers to come during times when she was out. It’s why I began bleaching my hair in the first place, so people wouldn’t confuse the two of us, and being blonde just suits me more, ya know? I tried being careful, and I still managed to put her at risk.”

The self-admonishment doesn’t suit her. More importantly, she doesn’t deserve to feel like she’s even remotely at fault for what happened to them. 

Raditz has never been one good at comforting, but he can’t help wanting to make her feel better. He takes her free hand and gives it a firm but gentle squeeze, drawing her attention back to him as he tries his best to lift her spirits. 

“Don’t blame yourself. You did what you had to to survive. Guys like that one are sick fucks who look for any excuse to assault anyone. So fucking stop blaming yourself, okay? You’re an amazing and kickass woman. Hot as hell, too, but that’s just an added bonus. Seriously. You’re fuckin’ incredible.”

He’s not just saying these things to make her feel better. He means it, all of it 

All of her is lovely, the pretty parts and the rougher edges that make her who she is. 

Her pupils dilate as she looks at him with those big, green eyes of hers, so beautiful he can feel the moment his heart squeezes in his chest. 

With a sigh, she relaxes and rests her head against his shoulder, the scent of cheap shampoo and cigarettes wafting pleasantly into his nose. He wonders if she can feel his heart pound inside his ribcage, and if she can, what she thinks of it. 

“You may be a cocky asshole sometimes, but you’re also one of the most decent guys I’ve ever met.”

Raditz half-laughs through his nose. “Decent, huh? I’ll take it, I guess”

Launch looks up at him and smirks, mock-punching him under the chin. “I like you, Radish-boy. You’re a bad boy with a good heart. My weakness.”

He swallows, and the action is audible enough to make him extremely self-conscious, more than he already is. “I like you, too.” 

And it worries him that he’s now realizing just how much, and in such a short amount of time, too. Enough to try to cheer her up with uplifting, albeit clumsily construed words. Enough to want to stay like this for a while longer, leaning into each other as they watch the sun tuck back into the earth.

And for a while, they do, and it’s not long before the chirping of birds dies down to give way to a chorus of crickets, and for the crescent moon to creep out steadily into the purpling sky. 

Launch turns her head to look up at Raditz again, her eyes bright even when the sunlight is all but dead. 

Her pretty face begins to shape into a look of displeasure, and he knows that something serious is on her mind even before she says it. 

“My feelings for Tien… those ain’t just gonna all go right away, you know? He was the first person in town other than Goku and his family to treat me kindly. Tien stood up for me so many times, helped me out when I needed it. I’m not a damsel in distress type of gal, you know that, but for most of my life I’ve had to be my own knight in shining armor, so it was nice for once that someone was the one protecting me. I didn't mean to fall for him, but I did. Now I gotta let go of him, for his sake, and mine.”

This is the most she's talked about Tien with him. Sure, they haven't known each other long, so she doesn't really need to open herself to him in this way, but it's obvious that if they're going to keep seeing each other, he's a subject that is best to be addressed or her feelings for him will continue hanging over their heads like a overblown balloon ready to burst. It also means she's comfortable enough with him to talk to about subjects that are difficult for her, and Raditz isn't sure what he did to earn that trust.

Maybe it's because the more they reveal about themselves, the more they see that they’re very much alike.

They’re both stubborn, hot-headed, and sexual creatures. Love metal. Have had multiple run-ins with the law. Have loved the wrong people. 

Raditz understands what it’s like being starved for affection, to the point you’re willing to latch on to someone not suitable for you. In some cases, they may even be toxic for you, and he’s all too familiar with that sort of relationship. 

For a second, he thinks about Turles and his cruel, sexy smile, before his mind is pulled back to the beautiful woman next to him. 

He has to wonder...What does she want from him, exactly? To be a distraction while she gets over baldy? To be one of those bad boy studs to sweep her off her feet and ride off into the sunset like in one of her trash literature paperbacks? 

He's not certain he can or wants to fit either of those roles. 

What does  _ he  _ want?

"I want to try," he says without preamble. 

Launch’s back straightens up and quirks a dark brow at him. "Try what?" 

"Being the decent person you say I am. Getting my life together. Owning more than three pairs of underwear. Beating the statistics that say I'll be back in prison or dead within the next few years. I don’t know. Being better at life, in general." 

"You have a headstart in some of those. "

"Maybe. Hey!"

Launch chuckles as she retracts the hand that pinched his cheek. "How'd we get so somber? We need to play something fast and heavy to break this mood."

Launch leaps off the end of the truck, switching on the stereo and then returning to her seat beside him. 

Raditz dramatically rolls his eyes and smirks as "Breaking the Law" starts playing. It’s an intentionally ironic choice on her part, and he appreciates her twisted sense of humor. 

They join in signing the repetitive chorus together, making the same fist-pounding motions in the air as in the music video. By the time the song has ended they're laughing so hard, they've toppled over, spread on the dirty surface of the truck bed floor, limbs splayed out and over each other. 

The sky has darkened to a deeper hue, and a few stars are beginning to poke through as they lay next to each other, gazing up at the cosmos. 

He used to take the sight of the open night sky for granted. In the cities he grew up in, the stars were hardly visible, their shine diluted by the artificial glow of the street lights. Even so, he shouldn't have taken all the freedoms he had for granted. The freedom to look at the outdoors whenever he wanted. The freedom to sing at the top of his lungs. The freedom to touch another person in privacy, with nature as the only witness. 

Launch pokes him on a rib, her nose nearly touching his as they both turn to look at each other. 

"So how are things going for ya at the Son house?"

Raditz doesn’t like this shift in conversation, mainly because he’s not sure how to answer it. 

It's a strange feeling to be living among an already established family, like being an onion in a bowl of apples.

"Uh, fine, I think. I'm still not sure how I fit into the family. It's like living with strangers, who you know are technically your family, but it doesn't quite feel like it yet. I like the kid, though. We’ve been kind of hanging out these last few days. Even went fishing with him yesterday when his old man couldn’t."

He's honestly amazed how he’s gone from disliking kids to becoming an uncle to one. Feels kind of nice to fit that familial role, though he’s still pretty new to it so he’s at times had to filter his mouth and limit their interactions. 

Kid doesn’t need to know the uglier aspects of the real world just yet, and especially not through him. Hopefully he never does. 

Launch smiles fondly, softening the sharper planes of her face. This softer side of Launch is something he doesn’t mind at all. He’d like to see more of it on her. 

“He’s a good kid. Reminds me of Goku when he was his age, only a lot smarter.”

If he'd been taking a sip of beer while she'd said that, he'd have swallowed it down the wrong tube. “You knew him as a kid?”

“They haven’t told you, huh? Well, yeah. I've known Goku since he got adopted by old man Gohan. We used to babysit him when my twin and me were teenagers. Gohan would pay us in food 'cause we hardly had any at home. I owe that family a lot. That's why I'm protective of them. Chi-chi and I might not like each other a whole lot, but we care, in our own bitchy way. She'll come around to ya, I hope. She can be a bit too much, I know. God did she give me a rough time the first few weeks I stayed with them." 

Raditz blinks."You stayed with them?" 

"Never told ya that either? Yeah, for a few months, after I came back from the city. My sister'd just moved in with her provider, and they both offered to house me but there was no way I was moving in with that dirty old man."

Raditz must have a questioning look in his face, because Launch soon gets defensive. 

"Look, I'm not against what my sister is doing. She sets her own boundaries and her own rules, and she doesn't even need to touch his dusty ass to get what she wants. She's out making her living like we all do, and people judge her for it. They think she's a dumb bimbo letting herself be used, but they don't know she's the smarter one, and that she's set most of the terms in that partnership. When the old pervy fart finally keels over and dies- fingers crossed it's soon- she gets all of the money, and she's set for life. Meanwhile, here I am, baring half of my ass to drunkards as I pour them shitty beer, hoping for decent tips to get by. I'd have stayed with them if I didn't know I wouldn't be able to handle Roshi leering at my sister washing dishes in sexy lingerie. I probably would've rushed him to his grave by now." 

Oddly enough, Raditz finds that he likes that about Launch, that she can love someone so tremendously she's willing to kill someone for them. He's not sure if the two of them will be a good or bad influence on each other, and frankly he doesn't really care.

The more Launch opens up herself to him, the more new things he wants to learn about her. Not just the major parts of her history, but even trivial tidbits like knowing what her favorite book is and finding out whether or not she's good at dancing. 

Important things. Stupid things. Everything. 

He takes her mouth into his, and soon they're making out again, right there in the back of her dirty old pickup truck like two country bumpkin teenagers. 

A chuckle escapes him thinking about them as that. 

"What's so funny?"

He’s too invested in this makeout session to do anything else with his mouth at the moment, so he answers her question with another tug of her lips. 

  
  


His mind is still buzzing with good vibes when he enters the farmhouse, a grin plastered on his face that soon dissolves when he sees the scene in front of him. 

Kakarot is comforting a sobbing Chi-Chi, who’s crumpled over on the couch as if someone had just died. 

There’s a blond kid on the other side of her, carrying a guilty, worried look on his face. When he meets Raditz's stare, embarrassment colors his cheeks. 

It takes Raditz a couple of seconds to realize that the blond kid is Gohan. 

Almost as soon as they see him, Gohan and Kakarot both give Raditz conspiratorial looks, signaling with their eyes that he should probably get the hell out of there and retreat up into the attic, but he doesn't catch on to their warnings until it's too late. 

Chi-Chi’s head whips up from her hands to glare at him with watery, red-shot eyes, and Raditz just knows he’s in a world of trouble when she snaps up to stand, held back by Kakarot from marching towards him. 

She wags an accustional finger at him. "Have you been showing my son Satan-worshipping music?”

It’s only when she points to a pile of shards on the coffee table that he recognizes them as the remnants of a disc. It doesn’t look like a big pile, thank fuck, but it still makes his blood cold to see one of Launch’s prized possessions broken and discarded like trash. 

“If I knew you were going to be that upset over it, I wouldn’t have let him borrow them. They aren’t even my CDs. They’re borrowed.”

“Doesn’t matter whose they are, though I have an idea who they belong to. The fact is you introduced him to this horrible music of yours, and now look at him! He’s rebelling and bleaching his hair like a juvenile delinquent, and he’s not even a teenager yet! 

“Honey, please,you’re overreacting,” Kakarot says, trying his best to be the moderator of this overdramatic shitfest. 

“Don’tcha ‘honey’ me! You brought him into this house knowing his history, and as usual I let you convince me against my better judgment.”

“Mom. Uncle Raditz had nothing to do with me dyeing my hair, and heavy metal music isn’t even all that different from music before it. In fact, it’s rumored that several classical and blues compositions were heavily influenced by-”

Chi-Chi glowers. 

“Go to your room! First thing in the morning we’re going to take you to a salon to dye your hair back to your natural hair color. You're also grounded for a month.”

Gohan gapes, a protest dying in his mouth as he processes his mother’s ire. 

“To your room,” she repeats, her tone a notch quieter but just as commanding. 

Gohan casts Raditz a look of sympathy before he shuffles out of the living room, and it's a sentiment Raditz mirrors for the kid. The boy may not have gotten a spanking like his old man would've given Raditz had he believed he stepped out of line, but Raditz gets the impression this is the first time this star child has gotten grounded. 

He's not sure which is worse. Getting grounded, or getting spanked. Either way, the kid doesn't deserve either one. 

Once Gohan is out of sight and securely in his room, Chi-Chi whips her head back to Raditz. 

Raditz takes one step back. 

She’s kind of scary, this little woman, and Raditz has been around all sorts of crazy people. 

"What else are you going to introduce him to, hm? Marijuana, ecstasy, loose women?”

“Chi-Chi!”

Raditz narrows his eyes. He has to take a few deep breaths before he says anything else, otherwise he may regret his words. “I'd never…Look, I guess I was just trying to bond with him through something I love. He expressed curiosity over it, and I thought a little heavy metal in his life would do the kid some good."

"'Do him some good'? Like it did for you? Wonderful role model you became."

"Chi-Chi, enough," Kakarot grinds out between his teeth and, astonishingly, Chi-Chi falls into stunned silence. 

It's the first time Raditz has heard Kakarot be anything but nice, and it's especially the first time he's heard him use this tone on his wife. 

The woman, for the most part, seems to have a lasso wound tightly around Kakarot’s thick neck, and it appeared as if he’d been content in complying with that power imbalance up until just now. 

Raditz sees that his little brother is not entirely whipped. 

Still, her last words are resounding in his head, and Raditz can’t switch off the unsettling effects they’re having on his sense of worth. 

"Nah, she's right, Kakarot." Raditz doesn't miss how his brother winces at the name, as if he'd just called him the name of a stranger, which in a sense, he has. "I'm no role model. I'm a fuck up, and that's all I'll ever be to anyone."

He can try as much as he can to be a better person, but there’s always going to be someone to remind him about his past, whether that be someone else or his own inner voice. 

This isn’t even really about his ‘Satan-Worshipping’ music anymore it hasn't ever really been. She’s afraid that Raditz will have a negative influence on her son, the way others had a negative influence on him growing up, and frankly he can’t really blame her for it. He’d be reluctant, too, were he in her shoes. 

Because honestly? He’s not sure if he can redeem himself. But he wants to. He wants to so fucking bad. 

Kakarot shakes his head, loosening his hold on Chi-Chi to address him. "You're my brother. I'll help you out as much as I can." 

Raditz's brows twitch, the familial term somehow managing to strike a chord in a way it hasn’t done in the previous times, though it has been close to doing before . “Brother? You don’t even remember me."

The prudent thing would be to retreat back to the attic, to cool off. He's not sure why Kakarot's generosity is chafing at his insides more than Chi-Chi's reproachfulness has, but it is. Could be because he's used to hostility. He knows how to let insults pass and brush over his shoulders. It's what he’s often had to do in order to survive. Kakarot's virtuosity is something unreal, though. Nobody can be this saintly. Nobody can be this good, not unless it’s a front. 

Unbelievably, it doesn’t seem to be. Kakarot is just that good of a person, and it’s as astounding as it is irritating. 

“You don’t remember me, or mom, or dad. You couldn’t have. You were just a baby, a little runt who never stopped crying and got all of mom’s attention. Even then I could tell you were her favorite. She doted on you, even when you drained her of all her energy. You’re kind of like her, actually. Caring for shitty people like me and dad. Oh, and it’s his fault they’re dead, you know. He was involved with the wrong people, did horrible things. Because of that they got riddled with bullets. Left us orphans. Except not you, right? No, you got adopted, went on to have a perfect fucking life.”

Kakarot is starting to breathe heavily, eyes narrowed as he holds on to his now horrified wife. Raditz can't stop himself. It’s almost refreshing to see Kakarot with something other than a stupid smile on his face, to know he isn’t so perfect, that he’s capable of harboring something other than fucking sunshine and rainbows. His flaws make Raditz feel like less of a fuck up, and in turn, it makes him angrier that he feels that way. 

“Why do you want to help me? I'm practically a stranger. Do you feel sorry for me, Kakarot? Do you feel sorry for your pathetic older brother? Do you think you’re some sort of fucking savior?”

“Stop it,” Chi-Chi says through a sob. 

Raditz flicks his eyes towards her in a hard stare, to which Kakarot responds by pulling her closer to him. 

“Don't worry, I'm leaving, just like you've wanted the moment I stepped into this house.” Raditz walks past them to retrieve the few belongings he has in the attic. 

“Raditz,” Kakarot finally says, his voice deepened to a register that sends a chill down his spine and pauses him in his tracks. It’s his dad’s voice, the one he used on him any time he was going to scold or spank Raditz for misbehaving. Raditz looks over his shoulder, seeing Kakarot with an expression that is somewhere between angry and sad. 

“If you leave now, I’m not sure you can come back. You have restrictions. Officer Piccolo doesn’t tolerate violations. I know you don’t want my help. To be quite frank, maybe you don’t deserve it, but I’ll do you one last favor and call Krillin to pull some strings in the office. For the sake of our parents, the ones I don’t remember.” There’s a cynical bite in his tone that is like a shard of glass pressing into skin. 

It's only moments later, as Raditz packs up the few belongings he has in a plastic bag, that he ponders the last words Kakarot just said to him. 

The reality is that while Kakarot went on to have a good life, he really doesn't have any memories of his parents. He doesn't remember being held and cooed at by their beautiful mother, the sweet smile and kisses that she showered on both of them. Doesn't remember Bardock feeding him his bottle, being so gentle with him it was like seeing a different person in their father's body. 

The trauma of losing them is heavier precisely because Raditz does remember what it's like to have been raised by them, and he honestly doesn't know if he'd have traded those memories to start over with a clear slate like Kakarot has. 

They’re precious to him, one of the few precious things he has left in life, and to think that he never would’ve had them had he been too young to remember is an unsettling concept. 

On top of his parents, he remembers the collection of CDs that he needs to return, near panicking at the thought of presenting Launch the pile of broken shards she'll probably use to stab him with.

They're resting on the coffee table when he goes back downstairs, relieved to see that all of them besides one are still intact. He'll buy her another copy as soon as he can. 

Beside the CD bookcase, there’s an envelope that’s addressed to him. The writing is neat and precise, which can only mean it's from the kid.

  
  


_ Uncle Raditz, _

_ I'm sorry for what happened this evening. I feel responsible for you getting in trouble. I was careless, and I should've defended you more.  _

_ You're still invited to my birthday party.  _

_ Until next time. _

_ Your nephew,  _

_ Gohan _

_ P.S. I left you money to replace the broken CD, and to take Launch out on another date, and whatever else you may need it for.  _

  
  


Raditz counts the cash stashed into the envelope and his eyes widen. He can't accept this. It's probably half a year's worth of allowance, which isn't much, but for a kid his age, it might as well be a fortune. 

He stuffs the money back into the envelope and walks over quietly to Gohan's room, slipping the envelope under the slit of the door.

He's halfway through the yard when he hears footsteps rushing behind him, and when he turns, he sees it's the kid, presumably having snuck out the window.

Gohan waves the envelope in front of his face, taking Raditz's hand and placing it in his palm. 

"You have to take it. I'm giving it to you."

"Ah geez kid, this is a lot of money wasted on me. I can't accept it."

Gohan shakes his bleach blond head furiously, keeping his hands over Raditz's grip so he doesn't try to give the lump of money back to him. "You have to! It's my fault mom got mad at you. You wouldn't be needing to leave if I hadn't called attention with my hair. I just… I just wanted to be cool. Like you. And that Billy Idol guy."

Raditz blinks, then barks out a laugh when he realizes exactly why Gohan bleached his hair blond. "You are cool, little dude. Much cooler than that Billy Idol guy, who by the way, I don’t even like, that’s all Launch’s taste. But that’s beside the point. You’re the coolest and smartest kid I've ever met. Don't blame yourself, okay? This probably would've happened, anyway. I'm not an easy person to have around."

Gohan's eyes are beginning to water, mashing his lips together as he fights back the tears. 

Ah shit. Sighing, Raditz stoops down so he’s at level with his nephew, putting an arm on his shoulder. "Come on, little dude, don't cry. You're almost ten. Practically a man, now. Pretty soon you'll be as big as your dad, or me. Runs in our genes, you know? Your grandpa was huge. Looks like you have some guns to show off yourself. " 

Gohan laughs as Raditz squeezes his bicep, and is surprised to find out that the kid actually does have some muscle. It’s all that farming he does, plus the genes. 

"Gohan," his mother calls out from the doorway, her face barely visible but her tone serious enough to indicate it's time for her son to go back inside. 

"You're still invited to my birthday party," Gohan tells him before he sprints back into the house. Right before he’s out of sight, Gohan turns around and throws him the horns. 

Raditz grins, not caring that Chi-Chi is there as he throws the horns back at his nephew. 

He doesn't need to see Chi-Chi glaring at him in order to perceive it, and it doesn't even bother him this time. 

He goes on foot towards the direction into town. Kakarot told him of a motel not far from the Bootstrap, and he figures now is as good a time as any to stop in for a drink. Except… Better not. 

He'll have to tell Launch about what happened later, preferably tomorrow after his mind is a little clearer and his mood isn't as sour. He doesn't want to ruin her night like his evening has been.

With resignation, Raditz checks into a musty-smelling room, wondering how it is every time something good happens to him, something bad has to happen alongside it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Btw I love Chi-Chi so please dont think i'm trying to paint her in a bad light. She just has conflicting feelings about Raditz atm and just wants to protect her baby.


	5. Ride the Metal Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> -The last half of this chapter has a femdom scene as well as a porn with feelings scene following right after. I marked off the femdom scene with "XXXXXX" in case you wanna skip over that 'cause it ain't your cup of tea or whatever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be the last long sex scene I'll write for this fic. I feel like this sex scene had some relevance in that it gives an element of how their chemistry works, and how that factors into the feelings that are developing between them. But I mostly wrote it because I wanted to write smut, who am i kidding lmao.
> 
> BTW A HUGE SHOUT OUT AND THANK YOU to @thebestkungfu and @gayriarty on Twitter for being my biggest fans. They've even made fanart for this fic so please check them out! You can also find me on Twitter as @gokus_chichis

Raditz collects the last flower for the bouquet he’s preparing, one with yellow petals, like the color of Launch’s hair. He wraps it along with the other freshly-picked flowers using a ribbon that the kind old woman supplied him with, and smiles awkwardly when Mrs. Tulip showers him with praise for being so chivalrous. 

He’s not really doing this to be romantic, though it is a charming touch to his usually brusque approach. What he wants is to hopefully assuage the ire he undoubtedly will incur, and if the flowers don’t work, he is planning on following with however long a session of cunnilingus is needed, and of course that’s only if Launch ever lets him touch her again after this. 

She warned him not to fuck up his stay at the Son's, and that’s exactly what he did. Not only that, but he indirectly got one of her most prized possessions destroyed beyond recognition. So, really, he doesn't know what else to do but to soften the blow. 

Raditz thanks Mrs. Tulip for her generosity and heads off in the direction of the trailer park, taking his sweet time as he enjoys the natural scenery and delays the inevitable. 

All of the money that Gohan gave him is tucked away inside of his wallet, inside a cheap backpack he picked up at the convenience store in town. The rest of his meager earnings and possessions are with him as well, since he doesn’t have anywhere else to securely store them for the time being, and he sure as hell doesn’t trust the motel staff with his belongings. 

Given his bank-robbing history, he isn’t sure what he’ll need to do in order to open a bank account, or if he’s even allowed to open one. He supposes it’s something he can discuss with Officer Piccolo in their next meeting that’s set in a couple of days, and it’s not a meeting he’s particularly looking forward to.

Eventually, he sees the run-down sign displaying the name of the trailer park, and he takes a final drag of a cig before he reaches Launch’s door. 

'Heaven and Hell' is blasting from the inside of her trailer, which has him humming to the melody as a way to calm his nerves. 

He knocks on the door, and she screams over the music to let him know that the door is open and to "come on in." 

She’d been expecting him prior to him arriving. He’d called her earlier at the Tulip residence to let her know he was stopping by because there was something he wanted to talk to her about, and he could tell that she picked up on his uneasiness despite his best attempt to keep it from slipping into his voice. 

Launch is stirring a pot of something that smells delicious and foreign, wearing a pink apron over a simple black t-shirt and khaki pants. She always looks amazing no matter how provocative or how simply she’s dressed, and the sight of her today hits him particularly viciously, jabbing him somewhere between his heart and his lungs. 

She looks over at him from the stove, her eyes moving from him to the CD bookcase, then settling on the bouquet in his grip. “You brought me flowers?”

“Yep.” 

Launch kills the burner and takes the flowers from his hands, her smile happy but just a little tense around the edges, as if she can sense that he's not doing it entirely out of chivalry. 

His heart jumps when all of a sudden a loud sneeze shoots out of her. “Sorry, I’m kind of sensitive to pollen. But I do love flowers, so I bear with it. Thank you.”

Raditz takes a seat as Launch fills a vase with water to dip the flowers into, setting the collection of CDs on her kitchen table. 

“So, what's this thing you wanna talk to me about? Is it about music?” Launch asks, setting the bouquet in the middle of the table as she takes a seat next to him, sliding the case over to her. 

“Um. Kind of. It's about your CDs. Chi-Chi found out about me lending them to Gohan and well, she was hella pissed. And…”

“And….?”

Raditz unzips the front pocket of the backpack, pulling out a plastic bag full of remnants of a disc that once contained some of the best music known to man. 

Launch scowls. "The fuck?" 

“I’ll get you another one. I promise. I’ll walk to that record shop in the city if I have to. ”

She seems to be at a loss of words for a few seconds, then lets out a huff as she melts back into her seat with her arms crossed and her face still screwed into severe displeasure. 

“It’s. It's fine. You were just trying to give the kid something other than books and farming in his life. I should've seen this coming, actually. Chi-Chi’s temper can be worse than mine sometimes."

"You're not angry?”

"I’m pissed. But not at you. I thought for a second over the phone that you were going to give worse news, like you were going back to jail or something"

"Well..."

The look she shoots him could wither flowers. He thinks he may have seen one of the lilies on the table lose a petal. 

"What the hell did you do?"

"Nothing! I mean nothing to get me thrown back into jail, I think. But I did leave the house."

Her furrowed eyebrows scrunch even tighter. 

“As in, they kicked you out?”

“No. As in I left. I lost my cool and basically told off Kakarot for being, well, too nice.”

“What the hell? What does that even mean?”

Raditz massages his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. “Fuck if I know myself. It just can't make sense of why he’s so damn nice to me when he hardly even knows me, or why he was willing to stand up to his wife on my behalf when I didn’t even ask him to. I don’t fucking get it, Launch. How can he be that nice of a dude? While I'm such a fuck up." 

Launch throws up her hands. “Why is life so unfair? Because it is. The two of you grew up differently. I know your life’s been tough, hun, but that don’t mean you gotta hold that against Goku. You made your choices, paid for them, and now you gotta continue on making choices that don’t end with you gettin’ thrown back into the streets. What’re you gonna do now, huh? What’s your plan?”

There’s so much disappointment in her eyes that he can’t bear to look at her anymore, so he instead sourly contemplates the checkered patterns of the peeling, vinyl tile flooring. 

He can’t help feel anger rise out of him for being chastised. He’s never been good at taking hard criticism, especially when there’s truth to it. Truthfully, he’s mostly angry at himself, especially because he doesn’t have a good response to her concerns, which are mainly his own concerns. 

“I honestly don't know. I have to meet with my parole officer in a couple of days, see where that takes me. For now, I’m staying at the shitty motel in town until I meet with the parole officer and see where he places me, if he even has somewhere to place me. I could end up homeless. Or in jail. I don’t fucking know.”

He feels her stare him down, a silence falling over her that leaves him feeling more tense than before. When he looks up at her, her expression is more contemplative than crossed. 

She then seems to come to a conclusion as she takes on highly exasperated posture. 

“Fuck it. You ain’t staying in that motel. You’re staying here with me.”

Raditz looks at her in shock, unable to believe what he’s hearing “What?”

“You heard me. You’re staying with me in the meantime until you figure your shit out with your parole officer, and if I were you, I'd try to patch things over with Goku and Chi-Chi. Maybe they'll take you back. Maybe not. Either way, I wouldn't leave things the way you did with them." 

He can hardly process what she’s saying, so he continues to stare at her like an idiot, until she yells at him again. “You’re here half of the time, anyway. Might as well have you eat me out every night until I pass out. But don’t think this is permanent. All I know is that I ain’t gonna let you waste your money on that stinky motel."

While he does like the idea of devouring her every night until she’s thoroughly satisfied, what he mostly wants to do right now is kiss her until her lips ache. But kissing her is probably not a good idea given the current mood. 

Launch's perpetual frown is even more pronounced as she continues to regard him, seated with her arms crossed and her leg nervously bouncing up and down.

"Thank you." 

Launch's frowns crumbles, but only just slightly. "Like, I get it. I lived with them too and definitely butted heads with Chi-Chi a couple of times. Almost got kicked out once for bringing a chick over and having sex too loudly in the attic. Don't get why she was so upset when I'd hear her and Goku bang at least once a week. You've heard 'em, too, huh?"

Raditz can't keep a smirk from creeping up on his face. "It’s awkward, but good for them, I guess."

"Yeah. I mean, I didn't mind. I had nowhere else to go, and other than it being somewhat of a strict household, it was also comforting living with them. The only family I've ever really had is my sister. Being with them was like finally having a functional family. I mean, they ain’t perfect, but what family is, right?" 

A functional family. He’s never known what that’s like until he moved in with the Sons. Chi-Chi may be an overbearing pain in the ass but he has to begrudgingly admit that she is a good wife and mother. She's even been kind to him at moments, while still maintaining her distance. 

Then there's Kakarot. He loves his family the way a father should. The way their own father should have. 

And Gohan. It'd be a shame if he'd never see the kid again. He was starting to get a little fond of the nerd. 

"I'm paying it forward, I guess. Being homeless sucks ass. Sure, this ain't no luxury hotel, but it's better than overpaying to stay for a dusty old, cum- stained room." 

He wants to say something corny and cheeky, like she's all the luxury he needs, but now's not the time to crack silly jokes. 

He has to admit that Launch is right. Without even realizing it, Raditz had been building up resentment and jealousy from the moment he'd reunited with his younger brother, letting it swell up inside him until it finally exploded with just a tiny nudge of a needle. 

It's not Kakarot’s fault that Raditz continued the cycle of violence his father had introduced into their lives instead of turning his life around like his brother did, regardless of the circumstances they’d each been dealt. 

He’ll talk to him and Chi-Chi tomorrow. Right now, he’ll eat the curry Launch prepared for them in silence, which ends up being a little too spicy for taste buds that had been subjected to prison food for the last ten years. 

  
  
  
  


They end up on the couch, watching a show new to him called Beavis and Butthead while sitting about a foot apart from each other, cracking up at the stupid commentaries the title characters make on a myriad of music videos, which leads them to lean in closer and bridge the gap between them. 

They just can't seem to be able to keep their hands off each other whenever the two are in close proximity to one another. 

The world could be falling apart and they'd still end up making out somehow, swapping tongues in a backdrop of flaming buildings and smoke. 

Tina is nowhere in sight today, probably out making the rounds in the trailer park, leaving Launch all to himself. Good. He doesn't want to think about anything else, wants no distractions. 

Just her and him.

When they finally part for air, there's a glint of mischief behind her lustful gaze. 

"There's something I've been wanting to try with you."

He swallows, not sure whether to be turned on or running towards the door. 

"What would that be?"

"Let me show you."

  
  
  
  


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  
  
  
  
  


Perhaps running out the door was the better option. 

“You want me to what?”

Launch grins wickedly as she holds up a red thong, her pose playful and seductive. 

They’re both completely stripped down and are in her room, their arousals fully visible. 

“I want you to wear this. This, too.”

She brings out a red garter next, which somewhat matches his arm band, but is something he’d much rather see on her. 

Normally, his response to her request would be a hard, resounding 'no.'

But she's already given him so much, going beyond what a fuck buddy you've known for over a week would do, and how can he say no to her when she's looking at him like  _ that _ ?

So he slips the garments on, red all over and slightly mortified. But as emasculated as he feels wearing these raunchy threads, he can't deny how his body is naturally responding to how Launch is leering at him. 

"There's one more thing," 

From out of the bottom drawer of her dresser, she pulls out a realistic, double-tipped...

Oh. 

His eyes go round. 

"Don't worry, it's brand new. Just came in the mail today."

"And you intend to use that on both of us?" 

She laughs, skipping over to him to sit on his lap at the edge of the bed. She pecks him on the cheek, an innocent move that she somehow twists into being sexy. 

"Don't act so scared. I know you've taken dick before. Do this for me? It'll be fun and hot." 

Sure, he's taken dick before, but real dick, and that was years ago. He's not sure how well he'll handle this one. 

"I have lube. Lots of it. And if it hurts too much, I'll stop." 

This woman. She has some sort of beguiling influence over him that makes him want to please her no matter what. 

His erection hasn't gotten soft, either, and it may have actually gotten stiffer at the thought of them sharing one dick, fake though it may be. 

So he bends over at the edge of the bed per her instructions, clenching his teeth as the tip presses against his lubricated opening.

It nudges into him until he swallows all of the head, stabbing him with the tiniest amount of pain that goes away immediately after it’s settled inside him. 

His own cock is pulsing and straining under the red thong Launch made him wear, barely concealed by the meager piece of flimsy fabric, while his walls twitch and stretch as Launch pushes the cock further into him.

"How's that feel?"

Launch is positioned behind him, her left hand on one of his glutes and her right hand gripping the phallus she's gliding inside him. 

He already feels like he's taken in a fair amount of inches. Certainly in terms of width this is more than what he's gotten used to. 

Raditz looks over his shoulder to see Launch watching at him with parted lips, her face flushed and her chest heaving daintily at the sight of him. 

She's enjoying this entirely too much, having this power over him, and it would be insincere of him to not accept that this role dynamic isn't also immensely turning him on. 

Raditz nods, jerking his ass for encouragement. "Good. Go deeper"

"What was that?"

He knows she heard him. She just wants to hear him saying it again. Who is he to deny someone as amazing as her what she wants?

"Go in deeper." 

He's grateful for the generous amount of lube she's already lathered into him beforehand, because even though it's just a couple of more inches that go in, they're enough for him to nearly buckle over as his arm muscles contract from the strain. 

"I wish you could see yourself. You love this cock. " Her voice is earthy and lustful as she massages his walls in circular grinding motions, picking up pace with every few strokes

"It feels good." He can feel himself loosening even more as Launch continues to stir him up, the almost stinging sensation becoming even more pleasurable the more receptive he becomes to the pressure building inside of him. 

Even his hips have begun to eagerly move on their own, thrusting his barely-concealed bulge into the air as he buckles against the sex toy. 

He's delighted when he feels her hand, slick with lubrication, slip under the fabric and grip his previously ignored member firmly, moving expertly up and down its length as she continues to fill him. He's being stimulated on both of his most sensitive parts, and he thinks he might just go crazy if she continues working him like this. 

.

"I think I’m going to cum soon," he says in between groans, feeling the tension inside him get tighter and more potent. 

"Not yet,” Launch she tells him, removing her hold on his erection as the heady thrusts inside him come to a halt. 

He groans out in frustration at the denial of his orgasm, his hips still thrusting into the air, yearning for her to continue.

A startled gust of air escapes his throat as he gets slapped on both sides of his buttocks. She then commands him to move to the center of the bed. 

He does this obediently with the toy still inside him. When he looks behind him he sees Launch positioning herself against the other end with her bottom facing his. 

She moans out as she glides onto the shaft, pushing her bum in further so she can swallow more of it into her sex. From this angle, he can't exactly see where they are connected, but he can hear their buttocks smacking against each other as they each push into the toy.

They moan into the air without restraint, without shame. Any remnant of reserve that remained in him flies out the open window. 

He senses Launch cease her movements from behind him, and he thinks maybe she’s going to pull it out of both of them, until she tells him that no, she wants to continue but in a different position. 

She turns and takes the other end back into her parting, this time leaning into the mattress as her hands guide his bottom into an up and down motion, as if he's riding her. 

He rides as best he can, though he knows it’s a bit clumsy compared to others with more experience in doing this. He likes it, though, otherwise he would have stopped. 

Launch pauses his motions yet again, letting him know that she’s going to pull the shaft out of him now. 

It's easier going out then going in, but he still has to bite his lips as it glides wetly out of him. 

"You're gaping," she tells him once it’s out. Her filthy words make his opening involuntarily spasm in response, and soon he feels the gap between his buttocks being filled again, this time by her tongue. It prods and stirs him to the point he has to dive his face into the pillows out of both pleasure and renewed abashment.

The slurping sounds she's making as she devours him are almost too much for him to bear, so he turns around abruptly and tries to take her instead. He’s been patient enough up until this point. 

But she resists, her aggression resurfacing as she grabs him by the hair and presses the phallus against his lips. “I want to see how you suck dick.”

A strong pulse comes from within the thong he's still wearing. 

"Let me fuck you already," he says, sounding more desperate than intended. 

She gives his hair another tug, nearing her face to his. Her expression is incredibly wanton, yet there’s a gentle longing behind her eyes as she looks at him. "Open your mouth. Show me how it’s done." 

Her tone leaves no room for contention, and he can't argue when she looks so powerful, so gorgeous. 

So he does as she commands, taking in one of the ends into his mouth. 

He tastes her juices on it, bitter and sweet, and it spurs him into sucking with more enthusiasm. 

The covetous look Launch is giving him is further encouragement to keep going. She's enjoying watching him, and knowing that sends a thrill throughout all of his nerve endings. 

"You  _ are _ good at this," she says, gyrating her hips against the bed in a way that does nothing to keep his own arousal from throbbing with immense hunger. 

He just can't contain himself any longer. 

He takes his mouth off the phallus and tackles her back onto the mattress, pressing his bulge up against her balmy cunt.

  
  
  
  
  


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  
  
  
  
  


She wants him as badly as he wants her, he can tell not just by the heat of her body but the desire behind her eyes, but she's not giving up the reins that easily. 

Wrapping her creamy legs and arms around him, she wrestles him down so that she's the one on top, straddling him just below his aching groin. 

"You really do look sexy in women's underwear. It's almost unfair how good you look in them."

His erection is peeking out the side of the red thong, putting pressure on the veins. He's been wanting to take it off for a while, and is gratefully relieved when Launch slides it off and tosses it to the side.

"I'm sure they look better on you," he says, a flush reaching his cheeks. 

Launch smiles down at him, a smile almost as sweet as it is lewd."You're cute." 

He's not sure how he feels about being called 'cute', but it doesn't matter. He'll let her call him whatever term of endearment she wants if she's going to look at him the way she is right now. 

And the way Launch is looking at him at this moment is making his insides twist with desire and something else he can't quite pinpoint. Maybe he can, but he doesn’t even want to consider it. It’s too soon to think of something as serious as that. 

"Something on your mind?" 

She bats her lashes quizzically at him, picking up on the sudden tenseness in his features. 

Without answering, he hoists himself up and presses Launch close to him, diving down to take her mouth before she gets a chance to protest.

Even though he's been mostly letting her set the pace and following her demands on this matriarchal romp session, Raditz won't let her deny him this kiss, and she doesn’t try to. Judging by the little moan she makes at the back of her throat and how her lips eagerly respond to his, she doesn’t mind the affectionate interruption at all. 

Sex is great. Sex is even better when you’re kissing someone you really like, which incidentally, may actually be the first time it’s been the case for him. 

His other partners? They’ve all pretty much been one-night stands and short-lived flames, and it was always better for him to let the flames die before they consumed him. 

With Launch, he’s starting to notice a shift in his attitude. From the moment he first came with her on the night they met, he had a feeling Launch was going to be someone he just couldn’t get enough of. To have her just once would be a travesty. To have her again and again might be playing with fire, but he’s willing to take the risk of being scorched to the bone. 

He wants this, whatever it is, to last as long as it can. 

He also wants to be inside her right this instant as his hardness pulses in between them, yearning to be let into her wet, sweet folds. 

He glides it right under her dripping lips so that she can feel how hot and stiff he is for her, how urgent it is to be hugged by her velvety softness. 

“Let me fuck you, now,” he says, sounding needier than he intended. 

This woman drives him wild for reasons he still can’t quite name or comprehend. The only other person who ever came close to making him feel this way is someone he’d rather not think about. 

Without a word and with a glowing smile, Launch takes him and guides it into her opening, sliding it inside her with a push of her hips. 

Raditz lets out a cry of relief. He’s been throbbing to be gripped like this since the blood started rushing to his veins. He likes it in here, maybe a little too much. She’s warm and snug, and fits him perfectly. 

The face she’s making as they rock back and forth in sensual tandem is so agonizingly beautiful that he’s almost relieved when she breaks eye-contact with him to throw her head back in pleasure. 

He needs to think about what she’s doing to his body and not what she’s doing to an area dangerously close to his heart. 

The slower pace might actually make him come faster, so Raditz picks up the vibrations and shifts his position slightly to hold off a little longer. 

Now he’s the one who’s setting the motions in place, ramming into Launch with one of her legs bent over his hip and the other extended between his thighs. He nips at her neck, follows it with a lick. Cups one of her breasts with a hand and squeezes it. 

“Deeper. Go deeper. Wreck me.”

He can’t deny her. He doesn’t think he can deny her anything ever again. All he wants at this moment, is to please her. It’s not even his own pleasure anymore. It’s theirs. He fucks her harder. He slams his cock into her until her walls spasm all around his shaft and she screams. Screams obscenities and screams his name. 

He wants to spend himself inside her, but this time there’s no barrier between his skin and hers. “I’m-I’m going to cum.”

He’s about to pull out when she clamps down on him, keeping him from sliding out. “It’s okay. Cum inside me. Fill me up”

There’s no way he can hold out any longer after that, so he shoots all of his orgasm into her, abandoning all sense of responsibility in that instant. It just feels too good to unburden himself inside of this beautiful woman, to fill her up so much that his seed streams down from her opening even after he unsheaths himself from her. 

“I’ll take a pill in the morning,” she says, cuddling up to him after they each melt back into the mattress. 

Raditz breathes in deeply, a bit of concern finally edging at his mind. He casts doubts away immediately before they take shape into something frightening. 

Better not to dwell on it. Right now, he just wants to bask in the moment. In the scent of sex and smoke in the air. 

He hugs her closer to him, loving and hating how right she feels in his arms.

Nothing good in his life ever lasts.

He’s not exactly holding out much hope that she’ll be the exception. But hope, what little of it there is, is there, somewhere underneath the layers and layers of hurt and disappointment and rejection harbored within him, glinting like a piece of gold buried in soot. 

Please let her be the exception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know several of you are enjoying this fic due to a few brief interactions with you on Twitter or Discord. I know everyone has their reasons for not commenting, but it would be super helpful to have some feedback on here so I can maybe incorporate or consider it into this fic. I want you all to enjoy it as much as I'm writing it, and if you're not, well I wouldn't mind respectful constructive criticism, either. Thank you all for reading!


	6. Got Another Thing Comin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raditz and Kakarot have a talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the loooong wait. Severe case of writer's block lol. It's Gab's birthday today (although not anymore in her time zone, and I'm a minute late in mine) so this is for her! Thank you so much for your support, love ya!

At his parole hearing, when asked if he had any regrets for his many and various transgressions, Raditz hadn’t been entirely sincere. 

He does have regrets, most of them having little to do with the crimes he committed and more to do with the promises he’s broken, the people he hurt. 

The bank robbery, however... He doesn’t regret that one, not in the sense that it eats away at him with remorse, chafes at his tenuous moral sensibility, though he did manage to convince the parole board otherwise. 

He stole hard cash, yeah, but it was from an establishment that steals more finances from its people than he ever successfully could, as evident by the fact that he got caught. 

At the time, he’d thought he needed that money more than most people do, and he really didn’t care much about those people, anyway, and was certain they did not give a single damn about him. 

He'd believed he needed that money to rebuild himself, to start over somewhere far, far away from where he stood. Away from a life of petty crime- after committing this major one of course- and away from his troubles, his history. 

Funny how, in a twist of humorless irony, he did get his wish. Starting over. Except starting over apparently means going back to his history, his past. His brother. 

Kakarot is out in a field surveying the crops, wearing a tan weather-breaker and khaki pants, black rubber boots protecting his socks from getting damp with wettish soil. 

He pauses as he spots Raditz on the other side of the field near the tomato cages and shed, wiping the sweat off his brow as he walks along the sowed rows of raised dirt, meeting Raditz with an inscrutable expression. 

“I was gonna go out and look for you. You weren’t at the motel when I called them this morning.” Kakarot says without preamble, sparing Raditz from speaking first, which is good because Raditz isn't sure how to begin. 

He had half expected Kakarot to turn him away before he'd gotten a word in. He hadn't expected Kakarot to want to see him again. It throws him off, eases up his nervousness minimally. 

“I’m, uh, staying with Launch. She insisted.” A ridiculous rush of warmth pools into his cheeks and ears at the mention of Launch, of his current dubious living situation. 

“That was my guess." 

A subtle tug at the corner of Kakarot's mouth appears, sharp and assuming. He drops the subject, thankfully, or not thankfully, and spares him any further inquiries as Kakarot invites him into the house, his tone surprisingly casual yet more restrained than normal. 

“Chi and Gohan are out right now, and you and I need to talk. That’s why you’re here, right?”

Raditz hesitates, slowly nodding in agreement, and follows him inside. 

As usual, everything is immaculately clean, remarkably homey and quaint, with the faint smell of cooking oil and something unique to only their home lingering in the air.

He wonders where the kid and Chi-Chi are, though refrains from asking, as Raditz tails Kakarot into the kitchen, grateful when Kakarot hands him a glass of water, silently wishing he’d also offer a shot of hard liquor. He’s parched from walking all the way here, still a bit dehydrated from staying up late exchanging swigs of whiskey and languid kisses with Lunch in bed. 

Aside from quenching his thirst, sipping the water is keeping his mouth busy from having to speak as he leans against the kitchen counter trying his best to look casual and not at all uneasy, watching Kakarot retrieve a short stack of letters from a countertop, which he then hands over to him.

“These came for you this morning, which was another reason why I wanted to find you. They look important.”

There are three letters. Two of them are from court. One of them is from the state prison, and Raditz can tell from experience and from the informal handwriting on the envelope’s face that it’s from an inmate. There’s only one person in there that would write to him, and it’s someone he specifically warned against contacting him. Of course that person would disregard his desire to be left alone. Turles was never good at respecting boundaries. 

Raditz nearly crumples that envelope, stuffing it and the other letters into his back pocket with irreverence. 

Kakarot notices, and he looks as though he's curious as to what those letters may contain, but keeps that curiosity locked in as he shifts his weight against the edge of the counter adjacent to him. 

They say nothing for a while, Kakarot being unusually contemplative and Raditz still struggling to know how to utter words that should be simple enough. He hadn't thought much on what he was going to say beyond a lame 'I'm sorry,' aware it’s vapidly insufficient. Not nearly enough to make amends, and questionably better than nothing. Maybe it's better to not say it. 

It's Kakarot who breaks the awkward silence. 

“I never thanked you.”

He snaps his eyes up at Kakarot in confusion, thrown off once again.

“For what?”

Kakarot smiles, an empathetic strain on his mouth. 

“Keeping us safe in the woods. For protecting me.”

Tension spasms in his jaw, clutches his forearms. Slowly, Raditz begins to withdraw, to tighten the shutters. He takes another pull of water, yearning more than ever that it was something stronger. “You know about that, huh?”

Except for that other night when he’d gone off on Kakarot during a fit of anger and frustration, they’d never talked about that night, or hardly anything about their brief history together. Raditz just wasn’t ready to. Still isn’t sure if he is. 

He knows, pragmatically, that the conversation is long overdue, that Kakarot has the right to know more about their parents that only a person who’d been close to them can give him, even though his own recollections are scattered and unreliable. 

Bardock and Gine are more than just victims in a newspaper article. At one point, they had been his entire world.

But each time Kakarot has previously brought them up, seeking answers, details, anything beyond what he may have read or heard from other sources, Raditz has promptly changed the subject, provided little more than curt replies, erected concrete panels between him and his younger sibling.

His nephew has been the only person who, bizarrely, made him feel enough at ease to share pieces of who they’d been, or what they’d been to him. He wants Gohan to know something about his paternal grandparents, because if not through him, then by who? Why it’s been difficult to extend that courtesy to Kakarot may be because they share a tragedy that happens to also be his most vivid memory of his baby brother, one that he keeps repressed but still manages to leap up at him at the worst of times. 

“You were only a child, and you showed more courage than more adults ever do,” Kakarot continues, speaking as if from the heart, sounding grateful for something he couldn’t possibly have any remembrance of. 

Raditz doesn’t feel courageous. He’d been shaking then, frantic and barely managing to keep Kakarot from slipping off his lanky arms as he ran into the ungrazed stretch of land surrounding the tailor park, baby Kakarot wailing as another four shots rang out from inside the room they’d all shared. Shots meant for his mother, who’d instructed him to take his baby brother with him while she created a distraction. 

When asked at his parole hearing what his biggest regret was, Raditz had lied and said it was the bank robbery. His biggest regret is leaving his mother behind. 

The glass he’s holding feels like it may shatter under the grip of his fist, almost wanting it to so that the shards can bite into skin and distract him from a different kind of pain, one that cuts deeper and sharper than an embedded piece of broken glass. 

“Is that why you took me in? ‘Cause you felt like you owed me?”

He doesn't mean to sound confrontational, hostile, nor pathetic. He came here to apologize, to admit he was wrong for once in his life, not to open up about something he had no control over. The way Kakarot is looking at him, with empathy, is less bearable than getting a cheap shot to the face. 

“My hands aren’t entirely clean, either, y’know. I’ve hurt people. Thought I did it for the right reasons, but I still hurt them all the same. That doesn’t make me a monster, or a hero. It makes me human, like you.”

Raditz has seen Kakarot’s military picture on a desk inside a spare room that is rarely occupied. He hadn’t meant to snoop, he’d just been curious as to why it is always closed when the other rooms are left open except when in use. It had been unlocked when he’d tested the doorknob, so he’d thought it’d be okay to enter.

He’d seen a metal display case hung on one of the walls, evidence that Kakarot had been a decorated soldier. It is the only space that shows any indication of Kakarot’s military background, and if he hadn’t decided to be nosey that day, he may have never known that. 

Like Raditz, Kakarot seems to have a past he prefers not to bring up. 

“There's no need to thank me, really," he says, shifting with discomfiture. He rarely ever gets thanked unless it’s for something carnal, and this is far from that. He processes gratitude as (un)gracefully as he expresses it. 

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Kakarot says, sounding slightly exasperated. “You were only six years old, younger than my boy, who wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t protected me because I’d be dead. I do owe you, and I’m sorry for not making that clear before. I’m sorry for not realizing how much you’ve been hurting. ”

Raditz looks away, shoving his hands in his pocket, tightening his jaw. He’s not keen on being this transparent, being psychoanalyzed by a country boy, his weakness plain for him to see, but something inside him subsides into the current, into the undertow of a tide that wants to pull the rest of him in. He feels, not exactly better, but lighter, as if something is starting to uncoil and slink away into a crack in the wall. 

“I’ll accept your apology if you accept mine." He'd accept it anyway, but his stubbornness is unrelenting

Kakarot smiles, one corner of his mouth higher than the other. “Deal. And about tomorrow… As far as Piccolo is concerned, you still live with us. I’ll talk to Chi, see if I can smooth things over and have you move back in with us until you find your own place. Krillin and the others know to leave you alone and not to sound any alarms if they see you’re no longer stayin’ here, but… If Chi-Chi says no, you’re going to have to tell Piccolo.”

Kakarot really is too nice, too decent and forgiving. For once, though, he isn’t miffed at his brother’s kindness, understands it a little more. He thinks he owes him something, and in a sense, it’s a selfish motivation on his part. But he knows that’s not the only reason. It’s because Kakarot is a good man with too much empathy for the likes of him to fathom, and that he’s going to have to learn to accept if they want to start over. 

It begins with going back to their past, unpleasant as much of it is. For now, it’s put on pause, but hopefully not for long. 

  
  


Raditz veers off the main road and into a hiking trail that looks like it may stretch on miles to the next town, maybe even further than that. 

He was never much of an outdoorsy type of guy before his incarceration, still wouldn’t consider himself the type to go backpacking in the heart of a murky Andean forest wearing khakis and a pith helmet. But he has gained a greater appreciation for earth’s natural resources, and it’s vast assortment of wonders and offerings. Getting lost in these woods wouldn’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. It’s even tempting, to disappear into the wild and dodge obligations and trivialities of the free world. 

The trees are lush with green leaves and the ground is mossy, and all around him there is tranquility. 

He can continue to bask in his surroundings, store his concerns and his musings in a filing cabinet to inspect later.

Instead, he retrieves the letters that are unceremoniously tucked and folded inside a back pocket of his jeans, one in particular tormenting him like a pebble rattling in a shoe. 

He stares at the letter with the neat handwriting, considers tearing it to shreds while it is still sealed in its envelope and then tossing it to the nearest pile of shit he can find. 

Self-restraint has never been one of his strong suits, and Raditz rips one end of the envelope open using his fingers. 

He skips to the signature before reading the body of the letter, and his hunch is validated when he sees the elegantly penned cursive spelling out the name of his former lover and partner. His former tormentor. 

He should crumple it up. He does. 

He should throw it away. 

He doesn’t.

He smooths out the paper, his heart bumping against his ribcage as he starts to read. 

_ Raditz, _

_ I miss you, every single day. There is not a day that goes by when you’re not on my mind, in my heart. I truly did not know how fortunate I was to have you until you were gone. I admit, I took advantage of your weakness, your fragility. Your desperation for love. But I, similarly, was desperate. I wanted nothing more than to find someone whom I could cherish completely, and who would adore me in return. _

_ Please forgive me for writing to you when you advised me not to, but I could not help myself. Without you, I am lonely, even when I’m not alone. All these other men mean nothing to me, do nothing to me except be of a fleeting use. I think of you when I’m with them, and I’m thinking of you at this moment, of how you felt inside me, around me. It makes me so aroused. Do you feel the same? Please, tell me you do, and come visit as soon as you can. _

_ With love,  _

_ Turles. _

_ P.S. Do at least write back for now. Perhaps send a little souvenir to help me through until I see your exquisite face and body in person again.  _

Raditz finds a puddle of muck and shreds the letter over it, the bits of papers falling on the muddy surface like clusters of snow. It’s compostable, so it’s okay, it’s not littering. 

The disposal is cathartic but only momentarily. Throwing away the pieces of paper won’t erase the letters that are now seared behind his eyes, and it won’t dispel the ache throbbing in his chest that those words gave him. Keeping the letter would be worse, and in recognizing that, Raditz retraces his path back to where he started, and walks to the trailer park that’s tucked away behind its picturesque surroundings like an embarrassing photograph hidden behind a more favorable shot. 

  
  
  


"How'd it go?" 

He doesn’t say whether it went well or poorly, because it was somewhere and nowhere in between, so he fills Launch in on most of what transpired, omitting irrelevant and too-personal details, particularly withholding mentioning Turles’s letter. There’s no reason for her to know about that. Launch has heard enough of his anxieties, his misfortunes. It’s a wonder why she’s ever willing to listen to him in the first place, to be interested in what he has to say, in what he’s going through. 

“As much as I like having you around to gawk at and fuck, I really hope Chi comes around.” 

She empathizes ‘comes’ as if to insinuate that Kakarot will use alternative methods to persuade Chi-Chi into allowing his ex-con of a brother to return. He wishes Kakarot all the best in that endeavor if that’s the case. 

"I’m still your personal sex slave for at least another day or two," he says, drawing her to him by the waist. 

“Well, then get to work,” she says, pulling away from him to hop onto the kitchen table, making the wooden pegs wobble as he does just what she orders him to do. 

  
  
  
  


Inside Piccolo Daimao’s neat office, Raditz is beginning to sweat from his palms. 

“You got kicked out not one month into your relocation and you didn’t think to notify me right away?”

“Technically, I left under strenuous circumstances. But we figured things out., and I’m living there again. It was.... An irrational act that won’t repeat itself.”

“You’re damn right it won’t repeat itself. Next time you want to flee again for getting your stupid little feelings hurt, just go cry in your room like a normal felon.”

Piccolo Daimao was born to be an authoritative position. He has the height for it, the presence, and he most certainly has the scowl and condescending tone for it. Raditz has also secretly wanted to fuck him before, wondering if he’d remain dominant or fold under while being undressed. Right now, Raditz just wants him to fuck off. 

“You’re lucky that that man is a saint and that he and I go way back in the service. He called me earlier this morning, vouching for you and asking me not to be too harsh. Even Gohan, my own Godson, had something positive to say, and I don’t take his opinion lightly, so I’m not going to slap an ankle bracelet on you. However, if it happens again, not only will I be doing that, I’ll throw you back into a halfway house, this one even shittier than the last one. Sound fair?”

Begrudgingly, it does sound fair.

“Yes, sir.”

“I will add a few more stipulations, though… No more alcohol. You’ll get tested every time you come visit, and should you have any trace of it in your piss, I’ll throw on the ankle bracelet plus one more year of parole time. I’ll also randomly visit more frequently, in case you decide to take off again. Got that?”

Sweat is now gathering in his armpits. 

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now get the hell out of my office.”

  
  
  
  


Over two weeks pass by, and while the atmosphere remains tolerably strained when he and Chi-Chi are within a twelve foot radius from each other, which is seldom except during dinner time, there is no further incident.

Raditz had been the one who'd apologized first, and like at his parole hearing, he hadn’t laid out everything for her to digest. He does regret losing his cool and storming out instead of settling matters as adults should, and he shouldn’t have disregarded her rules even though they’re daft and borderline tyrannical. He was an ungrateful prick, and he says as much, the obscenity makes her wince but she nonetheless seems satisfied at his admission. 

He still finds her insufferable at times, and it’s a good thing his work at the farm and as a part-time handyman has picked up around town to keep them apart for as much and as long as possible. 

Chi-Chi hadn’t said much in return except to ask him what his favorite meal is, and the next day, without warning, made him ramen with poached egg and sirloin slices, like his ma used to make.

"That's her way of apologizing," Kakarot had whispered to him while they'd been playing checkers on the coffee table as his sister-in-law worked her magic in the kitchen. "She makes me my favorite dessert after every fight, and then gives me a little extra something, if you know what I mean."

He knows exactly what he means. To his mortification, he’s heard just how Chi-Chi makes it up to Kakarot.

It's been easier to pick up an approximation of a relationship with his younger sibling now that they'd gotten a few things off of their backs, though he knows they have a lot of time to make up for, a sundry of things to disclose. 

They haven't brought up that night-their parents' final night- again. He will, eventually, just not right now. 

Instead, he gives Kakarot smaller particulars, like how Gine's favorite color was green and that her nails were always painted pink or red. One time, she'd painted Raditz's nails a bright fuschia (or was it fire engine red?) and Bardock had freaked out about how that wasn't what boys should do, that he looked girly, some bullshit like. If only there was a way Bardock knew his eldest has had a dick in his mouth, maybe that'd make him turn in his grave.

"I don’t hate the guy," he confesses to Kakarot as they lounge on the back patio, Kakarot on a wicker chair and Raditz leaning against one of the pillars sustaining the patio roof, taking in a pull of smoke before putting out the cig so he can appreciate the crisp, evening spring air . "I know it may seem like it, but most of what I remember about him is of him being unhappy. Think about the only times I recall seeing him smile is when you were born, and when mom forced her to dance with him one time. It was mostly ma who looked after us, especially after you were born…. You were a needy baby, but then again, I guess all babies are that way. At least you were a cute baby and not an ugly one."

Kakarot chuckles, "I’ve seen pictures. Grandpa was able to get copies of them, somehow. It’s sad that they got lost somewhere along the way... You've always had long hair."

Instinctively, Raditz touches his hair, which hangs in a low ponytail from when he’d pulled it back to do the dishes. "Bardock is the one who introduced me to hard rock and early heavy metal."

Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Rush… His father would play their vinyls religiously, hum their tunes as he bobbed his head to the music. Then Raditz started humming along, too, belting it at the top of his lungs, pretending to hold a mic as his unmatured, raspy voice wrapped around the lyrics whose meaning he couldn’t yet quite grasp. Come to think of it, it was one of the few instances he’d seen his father look proud of him, besides when he told Bardock that he’d fought back against his schoolyard bully. 

No, he doesn't hate his father. His father gave him music, gave him the one positive constant in his life. 

There are moments when he thinks that he may hate him, when he sinks into a darker headspace than usual, and there are moments when he thinks he may still love him, too. Seeking his admiration, seeking his approval, even as he’s buried six feet under ground below a modest grave marker, a skeletal figure with a permanent grin that rarely appeared when there’d been skin stretched over it. 

  
  
  
  
  


On the day of Chi-Chi and Goku’s tenth wedding anniversary, Raditz gets kicked out again. This time it’s just for a day and a half, and this time he notifies Piccolo in case he decides to randomly drop in for an inspection and doesn’t find him there, instead finding the pair in a deeply intimate position, which would be comical and good conversation piece but he’d rather not risk Piccolo’s wrath. 

In the meantime, Gohan is sent off to his grandfather’s house, and Raditz gets to sleep with and then wake up to Launch by his side . Except he doesn’t. He wakes up to an empty spot on the bed, and to the sound of guitar strings strumming an unfamiliar tune as a pleasantly raspy voice sings softly in unison, flowing from the other end of the modest trailer. 

Launch is on the living room floor, plucking and sliding her fingers along the neck and body of an acoustic, pausing to jot down something in a notebook. It looks like poetry, like lyrics. 

“Hey,” he rasps, morning thickness coating his tongue. Her playing ceases, startled into silence. She’d been so focused on her music that she hadn’t noticed he was up and about.

“You have a nice voice,” he adds, finding amusement in her diffident stare. 

Launch tsks, her face scrunching as she flips the notebook over so he won’t see what she wrote. He picked up a few of the words, something about hurt and healing, but her voice had been drowned out by the guitar, her enunciation unclear and faint. 

He’s heard her sing before but not like this, not with effort, and not in this way. Her voice suits the grunge style of music that had been most popular earlier on in the decade during his time as human cattle. He’d wanted to like it, gave it a chance despite the accusation that it’d been the main cause for the death of metal, but it wasn’t for him. Too whiny. Too warbly.

He hasn’t seen her play before, either. Each time he’s asked if she would give him a demonstration of her abilities, she rebuffed him and claimed she sucked.

Her playing is simple, slightly amateurish, but honest and heartfelt, the way music should be. It doesn't suck, not at all.

“Well, I don’t sing as well as you, but I guess it’s not horrible.”

“You don’t have to compare yourself to me. You’re wonderful in so many ways that I’m not.” 

“Alright, Mr. Smooth-Talker,” she grins setting down the acoustic to stretch. “You want breakfast?”

Raditz shakes his head, kissing her shoulder. “I’ll fix myself a bowl of cereal. You continue.”

He’s relieved when she doesn’t reject his suggestion, continuing to tinker with the guitar and humming a sad but hopeful song. 

Later that day, when he returns to the Son house, hoping it’s been thoroughly disinfected, he finds more mail set apart for him. This time he knows who the letter with handwriting is from, and this time, he knows what do. 


	7. Here Comes Your Ghost Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of everything.
> 
> Also, keep in mind this is set in the late 90s, so some 90s slang and lingo will be peppered throughout, including things that aren't very PC.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! It's been a little over a month since I updated, which is better than waiting almost an entire year. Thank you so much to all of those who have stuck with this fic despite its sporadic updates. I'm thinking maybe four more chapters are left, but we'll see.
> 
> I have no beta, so I apologize for any grammatical errors. My eyes get tired after a while and tend to miss some mistakes while editing. Lmk if there are any that bother you so I can fix them.
> 
> I love to see all of your comments, even if I don't get many. This is a relatively new and small ship so I'm just happy to provide ya'll with a story.
> 
> Enjoy
> 
> -Mez

Daimao adds one other stipulation during one of his biweekly check-ups, and that’s for Raditz to find a “real job.” 

The gigs he sporadically gets as a handyman aren’t real enough, apparently. Even after having his references interviewed and verified, Daimao isn’t satisfied, not until Raditz is under a payroll that is earned in checks. He says it’s for tax and legal purposes, proof that he’s receiving legitimate income through non-illicit means, honest hard work, whatever the fuck that means.

For the time being, he’s allowed to continue with his side gigs and odd jobs, so long as he concurrently looks for steady employment. 

Without a reliable source of transportation, though, Raditz has had no other choice but to apply to the few businesses and establishments within the area, including the bar where Launch works at. Unfortunately, having listed her as reference hadn't worked in his favor. Did quite the opposite, in fact. Raditz suspects that it's because the owner has a thing for her, and isn’t keen on hiring the guy who’s banging the chick he likes. His record doesn’t help, either. 

It’s not just the bar owner that won’t hire him. He hasn't heard back from any of the other places he’s applied to, and it’s discouraging. 

“Don’t give up, these things take time,” Launch reassures, slipping him a mocktail to wash down the greasy-battered french fries he's ordered. 

Now that he’s forbidden to have alcohol, she’s been fixing him all types of non-alcoholic drinks while he visits her at the bar. Gotta have something to keep his thirst quenched while he admires her over the bar table. 

The regulars all seem to be enamored with her, too, but unlike him, they keep their distance. She’ll throw them a flirtatious bone or two to keep the tips flowing and the seats occupied, but it's only him she sneaks kisses to in dark corners and in dim spaces, the one who’ll she’ll hike her skirt up for when she manages to sneak away from her duties. At least when he's around. 

  
  


They haven't really placed a label on what they are. Don't even know what to call it when they've been asked, and don't discuss it after when they're alone. 

Are they fuck buddies? No, that feels off, coats a sour taste at the back of his tongue. And he wouldn't dare call her his girlfriend, doubts she’d want him to.

He’s not sure what this is, what they are, only that it’s good. 

And that’s a problem. Launch is like a dream, and dreams aren’t permanent. 

She’ll tire of him, eventually, find someone else to fill her time and the space between her thighs. Hers is a happy void where he forgets about everything except the shape of her lips, the length of her legs, everything that is uniquely and only her. 

Best not to call it anything, because at any moment it can shift and evaporate, switch from hot to cold, volatile just like her temper.

In between working odd jobs and helping out at the farm and job searching, he’s seen less of her these last couple of weeks, and he has to wonder if she’s not already screwing someone else. Maybe not frequently. One-night stands, perhaps. She’s given no indication of being with anyone else, but she is well within her right to do so, since they won’t even name this thing they have, haven’t established boundaries or rules or anything except what they consent to during sex. 

Then that means he’s well within his right to do should the opportunity ever present itself, which, eventually, it does. 

  
  


He meets Ranfan at the convenience store where Raditz does most of the Tulips’s grocery shopping, the same one where he ran into Launch shortly after their first falling out over Tien almost a month ago. Tien, that’s the one stipulation they do have. Not to speak of him unless she brings him up first. She hasn’t, not since their first real date. 

Ranfan’s hair is curly and dyed purple, but what grabs his attention first and foremost are her stupendously large breasts. It would be hard for anyone not to notice what with the low cut of the blouse and generous push of the bra, and the shimmery lotion spread over her bosom like a glittery holiday ornament. Her glossy red pout lifts into a smile when she notices his line of vision, and Raditz quickly looks away as she continues to ring up the items on the list, curving further in amusement when he reads the name on her nametag as if that were the real motive as to why he’d been staring at her chest. 

He didn’t think he’d see another attractive young woman besides Launch and Chi-Chi around these parts, not with the town being so small and the pickings so slim. It’s like the people in this town are all either total babes or homelier than a sack of potatoes, or are otherwise too old or too young for him to be interested in. 

“I only work here when my husband’s too busy doing other stuff. Most days I’m  _ all alone _ in my house, bored to death wishing I had company,” she says, exaggeratedly forlorn and despondent. 

“Don’t you have any friends?”

“Not really. All the women in town hate me.”

“So then get guy friends.” 

He realizes a second too late that she may have misinterpreted his sarcasm as a suggestion to invite him over, which she apparently does, because it’s then when she hires him to do yard work the following day while her husband is away. 

That’s how he ends up at Ranfan’s husband’s property pulling weeds and cutting grass, all the while aware that she’s staring at him through the window as he maneuvers the lawnmower through the grass. He considers removing his shirt to give her a better view if she’s going to continue ogling him like that, his vanity curious to see her reaction. 

He could take it a step further and relieve the lonely housewife of her frustration, mixing business with pleasure, each consenting to a sexual activity aside from what he was hired to do. That wouldn’t make him a hooker, would it? 

When she invites him in to earn his payment for his work, it’s Ranfan who makes the first move, taking his hand as she gingerly places a few bills on his palms, gently stroking his wrist as she does so. Her perfume is strong and cloying as she shortens the space between them, lifting her chin to look up at him from under a purple fringe and black heavy lashes caked with mascara. She smiles coquettelsy at him, rakes her eyes from his face down to his chest, down to his groin and then back up again, blue eyes twinkling as her clean fingers skim a section of skin about his waist.

“You’re very sweaty,” she says, hiking the hem of his shirt as her fingers continue their exploration of his torso. “You should take this off.”

His blood rushes hotly upon being touched, his nerve endings spark and sizzle. But he can’t get over how her eyes are blue and not green, that she smells like overpriced bottled fragrance and not like cigarettes and cheap shampoo. Something is holding him back, keeps him from pressing against her body. 

  
  


Caution, that’s what it has to be. If Daimao finds out that he engaged in a sexual activity with a “client,” he could slam him with a prostitution charge and have him back in handcuffs.There’s another thought in the back of his mind, one with green eyes and blonde hair as he ceases Ranfan by the wrist, firm but not enough to hurt her. He takes a step back as he releases her, watching her incredulity turn to a look of utter indignation. She’s not used to rejection, and it shows plainly on her haughty face. 

“Unless you need me to take care of anything else that doesn’t require removing an article of clothing from my person, I think my job here is done.”

He ignores the expletive hurled at his retreating form as he slips the cash into his wallet, noting that it appears to be more than what was initially offered, and probably had been put there as an incentive to provide extra services that Daimao would surely consider “illicit means.” 

  
  
  
  


With no other gigs left for the day, Raditz returns to the farm to help with what’s left of the chores, consisting mainly of providing upkeep of the farm equipment. He sharpens garden shears, mower blades, and chainsaws, greases the tractor engine and other heavier machinery in need of an oiling. Chi-Chi meanwhile is locked in her office taking care of the business side of things, while his sibling is finishing up the last of the field work with the help of his nephew. 

In the course of a few weeks, Raditz’s maintenance and farm work has improved to the point he no longer needs to be supervised and instructed while doing certain tasks, and although he wouldn’t go as far to say that he enjoys working hard, he’s thankful for the distraction, glad that it keeps him busy and from being bored out of his mind. 

For once, he’s not out destroying and ruining everything he touches. He’s helping things operate and making things grow. Cultivating, as Gohan puts it. 

His nephew walks into the barn as Raditz is putting the last of the equipment back on their respective places, brandishing a green envelope in the style of a royal courier. 

“Uncle Raditz, I formally invite you to my tenth birthday celebration.’

Raditz arches an eyebrow, smudging a corner of the paper with motor oil as he takes it from him. 

“Thanks. I thought I was already invited.”

“Not formally. Now it’s formal. Tangible proof that you’re my invitee. I even signed my name on it.”

Raditz lets out a small laugh. “You ever consider becoming a lawyer? If I ever get into hot water again, I sure could use your help.”

Gohan nods sagaciously. “I have, actually, among other careers, but I sure hope it never comes to the point where you’d need my help as a lawyer, Uncle Rad.”

The kid has taken up calling him Uncle Rad. He kind of digs it. It makes it feel, well, rad. 

“You never know, kid. Our justice system is not always fair.”

He also can’t say he’ll never fall back into old habits, become desperate enough to cut some corners and break the rules again. 

“My godfather is fair. So is Krillin.”

“Your godfather is an exception.” Barely. 

Gohan seems to ponder this, skeptical and considerate. “I know very little of the criminal justice system to refute that.” 

Raditz laughs again, flipping a bucket upside down to take a seat on it as he rehydrates with water. Gohan finds another bucket and does the same, scooting up next to him and looking supremely tidier and cleaner than his uncle by contrast. His hair is still blond, turning an orangey color in some areas, with dark roots inching out of his scalp. Apparently, the hairstylist had refused to add another layer of color over it, claiming that there’d be a risk of it breaking off and further damaging his hair. The only other option besides leaving it be had been to shave if all off, and Chi-Chi had said she’d rather that her son look like a delinquent punk than a gangbanging skinhead. 

Raditz thinks that the kid looks pretty punk rock, and in a good way. 

“What about you? Do you ever think about what you want to do for a career?”

Raditz snorts. His nephew may be highly intelligent and well-educated for his age, but he's still very much young and naive, sheltered and inexperienced. It’s not his fault, of course. He's not even ten yet, not for another forty something hours. 

“Kid, I can’t even get a proper job. Someone like me doesn’t have a lot of options. If it wasn’t for your old man, I wouldn’t have any work.”

He wouldn’t have anything. Probably would still be stuck in purgatory in an overrun, smelly old halfway house, monitored and confined to wander no further than given parameters. Or worse and most likely, he’d be homeless, couch-surfing his way to survive, sleeping with sketchy strangers in exchange for shelter, until eventually he’d end up back where he started: cramped in a forty eight square feet box of concrete and steel. 

“Oh. Well, was there something that you did want to be before you- Uh...”

“Became a criminal?”

“Yes.”

Raditz doesn’t take offense to his question. It’s a good question, and one he hasn’t pondered in a while. 

“I wanted to be a rockstar." 

What kid doesn’t want to be some type of star? A famous and important figure like an actor or a president, or something as impossible and epic as a superhero.

“Like one of the bands that you showed me? Like, Yngwie Malmsteen?”

Raditz smiles. Kid actually remembered how to pronounce his name. “Not quite like Yngview- he's a guitarist and I wanted to be a vocalist, but yeah you get the idea.”

Gohan perks up. “You have a great voice! We’ve heard you sing in the shower and up in the attic. Even mom is impressed. She won’t say so, but I can tell.”

Raditz allows himself a fleeting, victorious smirk. “Yeah, well, it takes more than just being a good singer to be a rockstar. It’s a lot of work. You have to know the right people, play the right gigs and places, and even when you do all that there’s always the element of luck that plays a role of being recognized. I never had such luck.”

He didn’t have much integrity, either. He partied more than he practiced, showed up at a few shows blitzed out of his mind, forgetting song lyrics and replacing them with made up nonsense or gargles. In order to be able to chip in for the studio that he and his then-bandmates would practice in, he often had to steal or do illegal favors to scrape in some cash, and that was unless his former mates took pity and covered his share among them. 

They eventually did get fed up of his tardiness, the absences, the overall lack of professionalism on and off the stage. The last straw had been when he’d jumped off mid-performance to beat up a heckler among the audience, smashing a beer bottle he’d been drinking from over his head. 

As smart and mature as his nephew is, it’s best not to explain everything that had factored into his failure. 

“It’s like any other career, then. Like farming. You can water the crops every day, pull the weeds and get rid of the pests, but if the weather isn’t right, if there’s a flood or a drought, it doesn’t matter if you did everything right. It’s not always up to us. But we’re still responsible to try to make things happen.”

Raditz nods, smiling at his nephew. “Exactly.”

“Well, given those chances, I think if you tried again, you can still be a rockstar.”

He doesn’t tell him that he gave up on that dream a long time ago. Having someone believe in him feels too nice to dispute, so Raditz just thanks the kid and starts air-guitar playing some riffs he vaguely remembers the tabs to, until eventually he starts singing out loud, too, closing his eyes and recalling when he used to play in dive bars on creaky dilapidated stages, the odor of stale beer and body fumes permeating everyone and everything in the room. 

  
  
  
  
  


“Holy shit. That’s hot.”

The chopper is silver and matte black and higher in the front, with a seat that’s low and at an angle. On it, is Launch, looking every bit the biker babe of his fantasies. 

“Isn’t he a beaut? I only take him out when the weather’s warm enough. Took me some time to tune up, too. He hasn’t been out in a while.”

He likes that she refers to her bike as a  _ he _ instead of the colloquial  _ she _ when referring to inanimate objects that one can ride. Reminds him of their own sexual dynamic. 

“I was referring to you. On that.” Gods. Who knew that he’d end up meeting the most attractive person in the world in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, thirty one years into his existence? He’s lusting hard, and he doesn’t care to disguise it. 

“Hey Launch! I see you brought your bike out again.” 

Her face lights up upon seeing Kakarot approach, as if she hasn’t seen him in years when it’s only been a few days. Kakarot seems to have that effect on people. Everyone, save for a few disagreeable individuals here and there, is always happy to see him, to bask in his presence and be outshined in his shadow. Raditz finds it slightly irritating at times, especially now. He’s not jealous. He just wishes Launch would look as happy to see him as she does Kakarot. Goku, that’s what she calls him. That’s what everyone knows him as. That’s who he is. Goku. 

He’s still getting used to calling him that. He’s thought of him as Kakarot his whole life, and to undo that has been more challenging than it should be. But he’s trying now, whereas before he wasn’t. 

His name is Goku.

“You kids have fun,” Goku says, grinning from ear to ear, earning a salute from Launch and a grimace from Raditz. 

Raditz mounts the passenger’s seat behind Launch, and wraps his arms around her waist, unable to resist burying his nose in her hair as she steers them away. Cheap shampoo and a faint trace of tobacco. It’s become one of his favorite combinations, and he only likes it on her. 

The rev of the engine and the wind whistling through his ears are louder than his thoughts, and distract him from thinking about what had happened the day before. 

It’s when they’re inside the music store, while they’re rifling through vinyl records and CDs and cassettes, that he contemplates telling her.

Would she even mind? Should he care if she does mind? 

He finds the record that he was looking for, holds onto it while he finds what’s next on his bucket list. 

Around them, posters of artists that he recognizes and of others he doesn’t are hung all over the record shop, along with several flyers from concerts both past and upcoming pinned to a cork board. 

One of these flyers catches his eyes, the font and name of the band indicating that they play metal or hard rock, and just below that one, there is an ad with tear-off-tabs scribbled with a phone number, soliciting a vocalist for a cover band that plays classic rock and roll songs. He fucking hates cover bands, thinks they’re lazy wannabes riding off the success of greater talent, deperate to find spot in the limelight by poorly mimicking the gods. He takes a tab anyway, it may give him something else to do besides farm and fuck and wallow in doubt and self-loathing. 

“Nice score,” the cashier says to Raditz as he assists him with retrieving something from behind the glass case, voice hushed but still audible as he signals to Launch on the other side of the room with his chin. 

It’s not just the cashier who's been staring. Nearly everyone going in and out of the store has, including teenage boys who need a lesson or two about being discreet. 

Raditz narrows his eyes at the young employee, daring him to say something else regarding Launch as he swipes the pin off his grasp and pays for that and the rest of his purchases. 

Launch is perusing through the country section of the CDs- this woman really does like everything -when he comes up behind her, asking her to close her eyes. 

“This is stupid. I already know what it’s going to be,” she says as she closes her lids, anway. 

He places a used copy of _ Kill 'Em All _ in her hands, planting a kiss on her palms before doing so. Launch had already known that Raditz was going to replace her ruined CD with another one. She also knew that Goku had given him the money to buy her a copy since it had been Chi-Chi who’d destroyed it, but she smiles and thanks him all the same, tenderly pressing the record against her chest. 

“That’s not all,” he says, retrieving the pin from a small plastic bag. He holds it up to her, presenting it as if it were a corsage on the night of their prom. “May I?”

At this, her eyes widen in genuine surprise, sparkling as she looks up at him and nods her consent. There’s a flutter inside his sternum as he secures the pin on a lapel of her vest, careful not to poke her with the sharp end. A silver warpig flashes its tusks just above her breast, teeth flashing ferally. It looks perfect on her, just as he thought it would. 

“Didn’t know it was my birthday,” she says, voice soft despite the sarcasm. 

“Does it need it to be?” He asks, enjoying the light dusting of red that appears on her cheeks. 

She bites her lips, coyly, as she admires the insignia that represents one of her favorite bands. 

“Thank you. I love it.”

Raditz swallows. She's too perfect. 

A dream. 

  
  
  
  


On Gohan’s tenth birthday, Raditz helps with the decorations. He’s in charge of pumping the balloons using a gas tank, which he had to buy from the convenience store where Ran Fan works. She was not happy to see him, and he did his best to not sweat in front of her oblivious husband as she irritatedly rang him up. 

He accidentally pops a few balloons while trying to tie the butts together and wrap them around with strings, biting back profanities each time one explodes with a loud bang so as not to earn a scolding from Chi-Chi.

The woman is being extra fussy today, running around the kitchen like in one of those competitive cooking shows, trying to get everything done before the clock strikes three in the afternoon. She even hauls him in from his duties to stir a sauce while she finishes decorating the cake.

By the time the first guests arrive, which is right on the dot, everything is already in place. Except for Goku, who had to make a last minute trip for birthday candles that Raditz forgot to purchase at the store. 

"Dende! Mr. Piccolo!”

A boy just slightly younger-looking and shorter than Gohan appears in the unfenced backyard where the party is being held, with Piccolo Daimao tailing just behind him. The children greet each other with an affectionate hug.

Piccolo, in the meantime, barely acknowledges Raditz with an abrupt nod, before turning to Gohan to give him his present, wrapped in a package that looks suspiciously like a book. 

“Happy birthday, kid.”

Gohan beams. “Thanks, Mr. Piccolo.”

The young boy, Dende, shifts his eyes over to Raditz, his posture shrinking ever so slightly as he takes in Raditz's stature and frame. "Hi."

"Hello."

"I'm Dende."

"You're Piccolo's son." Adoptive son. Gohan has told him a lot about him. He's also seen a picture of the boy sitting on Piccolo's desk. When he’d asked Piccolo if the child was his, he’d simply grunted, 'None of your goddamn business.'

"Yes. You're Gohan's criminal uncle who my dad is helping, right?"

Raditz grins. "I suppose."

"You suppose nothing. I've made exceptions for you that I normally wouldn't make for anyone else. I'm putting my ass on the line for you, y'know. How's the job search going, by the way?"

"Alright," ChiChi interjects. "Let's save this for the visits. It's Gohan's birthday. We're here to celebrate and have us some good family fun."

Fun is not exactly what they're having as two of the three adults currently present, Piccolo and Chi-Chi, make small talk while he stands idly by eating finger food and trying not to eavesdrop.

They don't really have anything interesting to say, anyway. Mainly how the farm is running, how business is going, how stressful work is. Adult things. 

He shoves another egg roll into his mouth, watching the kids be kids. 

Thank goodness Launch arrives not long after, carrying a rectangular box haphazardly wrapped in repurposed Christmas paper. Chi-Chi looks like she wants to comment on her poorly done gift-wrapping job but bites back her tongue, which is a good choice on her part. Gohan, meanwhile, is as polite and grateful as ever for the gift, vocalizing his thanks to her. 

Raditz beams at her as she comes around to greet him, noting that she's wearing the denim jacket with the Motörhead pin he'd surprised her with the other day. His heart does a victorious leap. 

"Hey, good-lookin. Nice pin. I wonder who gave that to you?" he says, winking.

Launch snorts, "Some hunky bozo with long hair and thick thighs." 

Chi-Chi dramatically clears her throat, apparently having overheard them. "Please keep it G-rated."

"Oh relax, Chi. The X-rated stuff is for later at my place."

Chi-Chi turns tomato red. " _ Launch _ ." 

Another guest just then appears in the backyard, a giant of a man with a booming voice who carries a tower of gifts, distracting them all from what may have turned into a catty exchange. 

"Grandpa!" 

The huge man swoops Gohan up as if he were nothing more than a puppy and then crushes him to his chest, doing the same to Chi-Chi after he sets Gohan down. 

He mirthfully greets the other guests, taking pause when he catches sight of Raditz. 

"You're Goku's brother?"

"Yes," he says, somewhat self-conscious. He’s not used to seeing men bigger than him. 

Hard to believe that Chi-Chi came from this man's loins. He's just so enormous and friendly and Chi-Chi is so tiny and full of attitude, like a bear and a pomeranian, respectively. 

The polite thing to do would be to shake the man's hand, so he extends his hand to do just that.

The giant shakes his head. "Oh no, you're family now." He opens his massive arms in invitation. "And this family gives each other hugs."

Raditz is frozen in place, horrified and panicking. 

For once, it's Chi-Chi who speaks up for him. "Not everyone wants hugs, dad. Leave him be."

Her old man pouts but does not relent. "Everyone loves my hugs."

Next to him, he catches Launch suppressing a snicker. 

"Not everyone," comments Piccolo, as if he's been subjected to this very torment before.

They all wait for Raditz to make a decision, and he almost gives in just to get it over with when Goku returns from his errand. 

"Hey Ox! I want a hug"

In a heroic twist of fate, his own brother sacrifices himself in his stead as he lets the giant engulf him with a bear-like embrace. Goku doesn't seem to mind as he laughs and pats his father-in-law's back as he nearly suffocates to death. 

A few more guests trickle in. A fat man with scraggly hair named Yajirobe, along with the Sheriff and an attractive woman with blue hair at his side. 

"Perv," Launch mutters under her breath when she catches him peering at her obviously fake tits. It's not his fault they're so out there. Even Goku isn't immune to the lure of them, grinning apologetically to Chi-Chi when she glares at him.

"I like yours more," he says in earnest, sweeping her up and down with his eyes.

Launch huffs and looks away, a blush creeping up her face.

"Yeah, sure," she says, sucking in her bottom lip bashfully, wishing he could follow that up by doing the same thing to her. 

G-rated. Kid's birthday party. Right. 

Anyway, the kid didn't appear to have been exaggerating when he'd said that he didn't have any friends.

With the exception of Dende, everyone in attendance are adults, either family friends or relatives of his brother who seem to be all familiar with each other save for Maron, the bodacious piece that Krillin brought with him. 

  
  


He kind of feels for the kid. Even Raditz had friends. Most of them were temporary and shitheads just like him, but friends all the same. Children his or around his age.

  
  


Gohan doesn't seem to be bothered by it, however. He's smiling more than usual, sharing things he learned in a text book and things he observed while studying the outdoors. The kid is loved, Raditz can see it in the faces that surround him and shower him with gifts and appraisal. 

Raditz sure didn't have that at his age. On his tenth birthday, he’d received a store bought cake and shared it between six of his foster siblings and their foster parents, and that was pretty much the extent of it. He doesn't even remember what flavor the cake was, or most of the childrens' names, for that matter. He wonders at times where they're at and what they're doing, if they have a family of their own. 

He takes a sip of his soda, wishing it was spiked with whiskey, and stays mainly on the sidelines as he observes everyone else interact, feeling a bit out of place.

"Is it true you robbed a bank?"

He'd been so absorbed by his reminiscence that he hadn’t noticed Tits McGee approach until she’s right there next to him. 

Trying hard not to stare at her boob job, as he answers her. "Yeah."

She gasps, hands dramatically flying to cup her face."Wow! Is it also true you also killed a man? A cop, if I heard right."

He thinks he sees a few ears perk up and turn their direction.

"No, that isn't true. He was injured, and it wasn't me." 

Why he's explaining anything to this Bimbo he isn't sure, except maybe to not be perceived as a cop killer in the proximity of two cops.

"But there was a shoot-out?" 

"Excuse me," Launch says, cutting between the two as she latches onto his arm. She gives the other woman a dirty look before batting her lashes up to Raditz. "We're gonna do the three legged race soon. Wanna team up with me?" 

Any other situation, Raditz would've refused out of preservation for what little pride he has left. A three-legged race? The indignity!

Right now, however, he is desperate to get out of this conversation, and get out of it fast. So he lets her lead him to the open field where a few others are already pairing up themselves with their partners: Gohan with his father, Chi-Chi with her father, Dende and his father, and finally, he and Launch. 

Maron soon joins them and is automatically paired off with her lover, while Yajirobe, the only one who came alone and without a partner, is there to be a flagger of sorts. 

  
  


They start tying themselves with ribbons to their respective partners by the ankle, their opposite ankles free and unbound. This game seems like an injury waiting to happen, and he would’ve withdrawn himself from participating if he didn’t know it would piss Launch off. Besides, the competitive nature in him takes over once Goku starts goading them. 

“Gohan and I are gonna win this thing, right son?”

Raditz tsks. “You seem so certain, little bro. Launch and I are the ones with the best thighs around here.”

“You two do have great thighs,” Krillin grumbles.

“Your thighs are great, too babe,” Maron chimes in, kissing Krillin atop his bald head. 

“Can we just get on with it,” Chi-Chi says, visibly annoyed. 

“Alright, everyone, get to your positions,” Yajirobe starts, voice booming authoritatively as if this was serious business. “But before we commence, a few rules need to be laid out: No purposely tripping, pushing, or in any way sabotaging another team or team member or you are automatically disqualified. Second, you can't untie yourselves from each other or that will also get you disqualified. Third, the first team to the finish line is the winner. Lastly, be careful and don't hurt yourselves! Now get ready. Everyone ready?”

Everyone murmurs or shouts their agreement. 

“Okay! On your marks, get set, go!”

They take off, and Raditz realizes that they probably should have strategized before they started running. They almost trip within the first few steps, clumsily shuffling their bound feet as they race against the other pairs that don’t seem to be faring much better. Well, save for Goku and Gohan, who despite their height difference, are working well in tandem together and are advancing ahead of them all.

Chi-Chi, on the other hand, is being practically dragged by the feet by her father, while Boob Job is bouncing around like a rabbit and keeping her team from making much progress. Piccolo and Dende are doing alright, however, it’s clear who the winners are going to be.

He and Launch end up getting second place as they fall just behind Goku and Gohan, laughing too much to care that they've lost in a most ridiculous way. 

Besides, if anyone should win on their birthday, it should be the one who’s birthday they’re celebrating. Gohan smiles in triumph as everyone cheers him on and chants his name

“Knew we’d win,” Goku says, panting and breathing hard as they come to a halt. They've all worked up a sweat after having just raced with part of their extremities impaired, but Goku especially seems to be having a more difficult time steadying his breath. 

It must be because he ran the fastest. His team did just win, after all. No alarms start sounding off until Goku loudly groans and doubles over, clutching a fist over his chest. 

"Goku!"

"Daddy!"

Piccolo grabs Gohan just before Goku brings him down with him, freeing their ankles from the ribbon that had been binding father and son. Goku meanwhile sinks to his knees, heaving and gasping like a fish out of water.

Before he falls face to the floor, Krillin is there to catch him, minimizing the impact as Goku loses unconsciousness and slumps down onto his lap. 

A commotion erupts around them, but Raditz is hardly paying attention as he stares at his younger brother in a frightful moment of deja vu. 

Suddenly he's six again, watching in terror as Bardock, whom Goku looks so much like, squeezes a fist over his chest.

_ Call the ambulance! _ His mother yells at Raditz, rushing to her husband as he struggles to breathe. When Raditz doesn't immediately move, she screams at him again and he finally does as he's told. 

But his mother isn't here to tell him what to do this time. 

He can only watch with horror as Krillin turns an unmoving Goku over to check for his pulse and other vital signs, holding his breath as Krillin makes his assessment. 

"He's got a pulse, but it's irregular. We’ll have to bring him to the hospital. I'll take him. It'll be faster than getting an ambulance." 

"I wanna go with!" Gohan is squirming against Piccolo, fixed on getting to his father. Chi-Chi meanwhile, is being held back by Ox, demanding to be allowed to check on her husband. 

Piccolo turns Gohan to look him sternly in the eye.

"Listen to me, boy. Your father needs medical attention. You're only slowing us down by getting in the way. Stay put while we take care of your dad, got it?"

Gohan nods, lips quivering as he fights the urge to cry.

With a man of Goku's size and weight, Krillin alone can't carry his friend, so he orders help from Raditz and Piccolo to lift Goku and transport him into the backseat of the patrol car.

It's only when Krillin barks at him once more that Raditz snaps out of it and takes initiation, grabbing his younger brother by the legs as Piccolo hooks his arms under his armpits, each of them heaving as they lift a deadweight Goku up from the ground.

Carefully, they stretch him over the weathered leather seats as far as his height will allow, and close the door. 

The siren wails as Krillin and Piccolo speed away with Goku spread unconscious in the backseat, the lights flashing red, white, and blue in their urgency.

In the background, other wails. The human kind. Chi-Chi is sobbing into her old man's chest, while Launch is comforting a scared Gohan with calming strokes to the hair as she holds him. 

Raditz just stares, dumbfounded and once again feeling stuck and completely useless. 

His mother's face then comes into view again, carrying the same tearful expression she did the moment right before he'd turned and left her behind, never to see her again except in pictures and in memories.

_ Take care of your brother. _

He'd promised her he would.

_ Sorry, ma. He's been the one taking care of me. I haven't been keeping my promise, have I?  _

He hadn't lied back then when he made that promise, but right now it certainly feels like he had. Like he's failed his mother and his brother. What a disappointment he's turned out to be _.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Update: Like the main title, the chapter titles are Judas Priest song lyrics


End file.
